How (and why) to store wine properly

Earlier this year, I wrote a series of eight articles suggesting possible approaches to collecting wine without spending too much. But there’s no point in building a wine collection unless you carefully curate it.

It’s not good for temperatures to fluctuate too much, and if they get too close to 27°C you risk losing subtle flavours and expanding the wine to the point where the cork, or screw-top, no longer seals properly. The conventional ideal temperature for a wine cellar is around 13°C, much cooler than most guest rooms. But it’s probably more important that the temperature is reasonably stable than that the wine is kept at that temperature.

It is generally believed that since heat speeds up reactions, the cooler the storage conditions, the faster the wine will progress towards perfection. Wine stored by one of the Scandinavian liquor monopolies once commanded a high price for this reason, and it is now fashionable among certain wine producers to store cases of wine bottles at sea. But private collectors should be wary of outdoor sheds, which can be disastrous if the temperature drops below -4°C. Depending on the alcohol content, the wine will freeze, expand and push the cork out of the bottle.

You need a reasonably dark place, especially for sparkling wine and wine in clear bottles, which are particularly susceptible to a condition called light that can give wine a truly awful smell. You also want to make sure your wine is stored somewhere that is odor-free, so probably not the garage if there is any danger of gasoline or oil smells.

A relative humidity level of around 75 percent at 13°C (55°F) — lower at higher temperatures — is ideal for keeping corks moist and doing their job. That’s why corked bottles are stored horizontally, so that the wine is in contact with the cork, while screw-top bottles can be stored at any angle. (I use a large container of water to maintain relative humidity and monitor it with an inexpensive humidity meter.)

Wine racks, one or two bottles deep and stored horizontally, are ideal for storing as many bottles per square foot of surface area as possible and for retrieving them with ease. But the bane of wine collectors is the growth of luxury bottles, especially those too wide to fit in conventional wine racks.

I know some British wine enthusiasts who insulate a room or cupboard in their home in an attempt to replicate the conditions of a wine cellar. One collector recommends using 110-170mm polyurethane boards, which have very low thermal conductivity, although he also installed a refrigeration unit.

For many wealthy American collectors, designing their own temperature-controlled and easily accessible wine cellar seems to be an integral part of their connoisseur spirit. Underground storage has the great advantage of consuming very little energy, whereas above-ground wine storage needs constant temperature monitoring.

Some Paris apartments may come with associated basement lockers, but in most major cities, properties with underground storage are all too rare.

Spiral Cellars sells prefabricated concrete “bins” for multiple bottles arranged around a spiral staircase, usually accessed through a trap door either inside or outside. I had one installed in the garden of our old house, but tree roots punctured the thick rubber casing, so it was no longer waterproof. Some of the labels on my bottles bear this out. (A too-humid cellar can make your wines unsellable, but it shouldn’t affect the wine itself.)

Some Parisian flats may come with associated lockers in the basement, but in most major cities, properties with underground wine cellars are very rare. Wine fridges that can be set to a set permanent temperature are becoming increasingly popular, particularly among kitchen designers, but you may want to store more wine than most can accommodate. In this case, professional storage is the most obvious solution.

In the UK, most wine merchants offering storage options use third-party storage facilities, but Berry Bros & Rudd, Lay & Wheeler (whose storage division is called Coterie Vaults), Seckford and The Wine Society all have their own temperature-controlled bonded warehouses.

It can be helpful to buy and store wine in storage, which means you don’t have to pay tax until you take it out of storage, and taxes in the UK are only VAT and duty, not capital gains tax. This can also make selling your wine easier.

It is not unusual for wooden wine boxes stored by Octavian or London City Bond (LCB), for example, to change hands several times while remaining in the same place. Fine wine dealers around the world are increasingly encouraging their customers to exchange wine among themselves, taking a commission, usually 10 percent, on the transaction. Some wine collectors make the most of this by pursuing a deliberate policy of buying more wine than they need and funding their cellars by systematically selling off a portion of their collection. However, this only works when wine prices are on the rise and the fine wine market is relatively weak at the moment.

As there is no shortage of good quality wine cellars in the UK, many serious wine collectors, especially those living in warmer Asian countries, store their wine collections on English soil. (Wine cellar suppliers multiplied in Hong Kong after the wine tax was cut to zero in 2008, but the biggest of them all is Crown Wine Cellars, dug into the mountain at Deep Water Bay.)

Wine collectors have a tendency to ignore storage costs in their calculations. Most companies charge about £15 per case of wine per year, with a certain minimum annual charge and, in some cases, punitive charges for retrieval and delivery, especially of less than a dozen bottles at a time. So, from a financial point of view, it doesn’t make much sense to pay for professional storage of wine that isn’t going to appreciate in value. But in the UK, anyway, fine wine tends to be offered on the market in large quantities only when it is very young; very few merchants, unlike their American counterparts, keep a large stock of mature vintages. Collectors in Britain are therefore more or less forced to buy young wine and store it for a long time.

As it would be impossible for me to visit wine cellars around the world, I asked colleagues and members of my website about their experiences with various professional storage options and those cited in the recommendations box here seem to be the most popular. Collectors especially appreciate being able to remove only a few bottles at a time. The Wine Society does not charge for removing and delivering three or more bottles from a case of undivided wine, but only wine purchased from the Society can be stored and, at least for now, it does not offer a trading platform between members. Like an increasing number of storage providers, it offers the ability to manage all this online, with specific delivery dates. Like Fine + Rare, Lay & Wheeler and LCB, The Wine Society stores individual bottles, not just cases.

Insurance is an important issue, especially for very expensive wines. Collectors are generally advised to make sure their wines are insured for their replacement value.

Individual lockers are popular with city dwellers who appreciate the ability to access them at any time of day (and especially night), but they are not tied together. wineBANK, started by Rheingau vintner Christian Ress as a locker-based wine club in 2003, has spread from Germany to Vienna and Washington, D.C.

Some providers charge a year’s worth of storage fees up front, others bill on a quarterly basis, and others count a half-full box as a full box.

There is no industry standard, but the most important thing is to have a solid team with a long and successful track record, and to verify the details of your insurance policy.

Continue @FTMag To be the first to hear about our latest stories and subscribe to our podcast Life and art wherever you listen