What’s all this business about lying wine bottles on their side?

There are lots of guidelines regarding the purchase, storage and consumption of wine. Some people see these protocols as rules produced by wine snobs, because most of them don’t apply to beers, spirits or RTDs; and it has been suggested that this is part of the reason why younger people are not interested in wine. Indeed, only some of these guidelines may be so useful, as I will discuss today.

For example, opening an old wine bottle quite some time before you intend drinking its contents really can get the wine to start releasing its inherent aromas — so-called “opening up” (for an example: Wine decanting: give wines some air, or Give that old wine a chance before you tip it down the drain). Similarly, being careful about the sediment in an old bottle of red wine can make your guests be more polite — decanting the wine works, but so does pouring carefully when serving (in both cases, after standing the bottle upright for a while).

However, there is one guideline that may be more questionable. This is the suggestion that wine bottles should be stored lying on their side. Now, obviously this does not apply to the vast majority of the wine produced in the world today, because that wine is drunk not very long after it is purchased (or even stolen, I guess). We are talking here about wine that is being stored for some lengthy time. Also, it does not apply to wines being stored in a plastic bag inside a cardboard box. *

The MasterClass list of the storage guidelines for wine looks like this (7 tips for storing wine at home):

• Store wine at the proper temperature
• Store wine bottles horizontally
• Protect wine from light and vibration
• Store wine at the proper humidity
• Store wine in a wine fridge, not a regular fridge
• Serve wine at the proper temperature
• Store open bottles of wine properly

You don’t see this sort of list for beers, spirits or RTDs! Anyway, we are looking in this blog post at item number two.

Let’s get one thing clear at the start, storing wines for any length of time does definitely have an affect on the wine. A formal review (Bottle aging and storage of wines: a review) notes:

Summarizing collected data, bottle aging and storage of wine is an important albeit complex and sensible process that greatly influences the features of the final product. During storage, deep changes in aroma, color stability, appearance, and mouthfeel take place and define the quality of wine, which, in turn, impacts consumer preference and appreciation.

The question, though, is: which of these things matter the most?

There appears to be only one formal research publication on the topic, from 2008 in Australia (The impact of closure type and storage conditions on the composition, colour and flavour properties of a Riesling and a wooded Chardonnay wine during five years’ storage), and it covers only two wines, both white. It concluded: “The bottle orientation during storage under the conditions of this study had little effect on the composition and sensory properties of the wines examined.”

So, 5 years of data on two wines was not supportive. Similarly, a researcher at a cork manufacturer has claimed: “The cork will never dry out with almost 100% humidity in the headspace, so it is a myth that you need to store a bottle on its side” (Storing wine on its side is nonsense, says scientist). Sadly, many of the commenters on that article disagreed with the author, some citing their experiences with storing wines upright over extensive periods of time — the corks did shrink.

So, one of the most common reasons suggested for lying a wine bottle down is keeping the cork wet. However, not everyone agrees with this, as discussed by Chris Shanahan concerning screwcaps (Cork vs screwcap Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Hunter Semillon 1998):

We drew a decent cork, and as a result enjoyed two amazing but notably different old whites. Most of the group preferred the dazzling, fresh-but-aged screwcap version. But a few favoured the deeper colour and mellow flavours of the cork-sealed wine.

One tasting of two bottles reveals little about the relevant merits of cork and screwcap. A good cork works. But earlier formal trials, and my own experience, show you might need to open several bottles to find a good cork, where every screwcap does the job reliably.

Well, all of this means that most commentary on bottle storage is based on personal anecdotes; but you may like to play it safe and lie the bottles down (Some wine pros say bottles don't need to be stored on their sides. Is that true?). However, most people do not store their wine long enough for the orientation to make the slightest difference (especially if the wine is in a can: In praise of canned wine).

On the other hand, there seems to be little argument that the temperature of storage makes a big difference, as suggested by several formal experiments:

• Wine storage at cellar vs. room conditions: changes in the aroma composition of Riesling wine
• Evidence for damaging effects of heat exposure on wine during transport and storage and recommendations for protection

To me, however, the bottom line is that the average wine lover is not someone with encyclopaedic knowledge. Instead, it is this (7 tips for storing wine at home):

Drinking wine is about people not about wine. Sure, we have lots of information and guidelines about what to do, but without my wife, relatives and friends beside me when I open the bottle, I don't give a hoot about those details. I store my wine in the “correct” manner (lying down in a cool dark place) for the expert-suggested period of time; and I therefore expect the wine to be in good condition when I open the bottle. But I am not thinking about technical details when I open it — I am anticipating how much I am going to enjoy the contents, along with my meal.

All of the details are rightly seen as esoteric, even snobbish, by 99% of wine drinkers.

This important point is all too often missing, as formally suggested by linguist Dariusz Galasinski (A better way to communicate wine):

Talking about wine can mean different things. All too often I kept hearing about residual sugar, tanks, oak, and so on. All could have been done via email. Yes, the technicalities were sometimes accompanied by the producer’s ‘wine philosophy’, but, more often than not, it sounded much better than it was.

But sometimes I heard stories of people engaged in the production. What is it like to collect grapes on the steep slopes of the Mosel? What is it like to see mildew eating up the grapes in Chablis? Or about how the producer’s neighbours helped in the winery and eventually drank the wine. At such tastings, we drank wine made by a real person, from grapes collected by real people, whose cousins, aunts and grandparents were also involved in the hard work. Wine became social and dialogic. Well, wine became ours.

The biggest benefit of wine is that it makes us happy. It was on this basis that I produced last week’s post: Interesting wine quotes from famous people.

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* Remember, in the modern world we are supposed to be minimizing our use of plastics!

How do you store your wine?

Most wine drinkers apparently do not have a "cellar", in the sense of a collection of wine that they will drink at some time in the future (How soon is wine consumed after purchase?). However, many of us do; and that immediately raises the specter of where to keep the bottles, and how to find one to drink with dinner tonight.

In 2019, Lettie Teague noted (Why wine lovers resist Marie Kondo-ing their cellars):

Many oenophiles I know -- myself included -- don’t have a system to keep track of the wines in our cellars. We buy bottles and put them away. I’ve definitely lost track of wines thanks to this methodless method over the years ... I’ve found whites deep in my racks that were a bit past their prime, and reds squirreled away in a EuroCave wine cooler that were almost completely over the hill.

I recognize that this apparent lack of method does have a method. The idea is that finding a bottle you have forgotten about is part of the fun of having a wine collection. (Talking about that collection is probably the main fun, though.) The forgotten bottle is an "expected" surprise, in the sense that it will definitely happen, even if we don't actually plan it. However, this seems to me to be a rather expensive way of being surprised, especially if it turns out to be a disappointment.

Mind you, most wine cellars are not arranged in a totally haphazard manner. For example, some people seem to prefer arranging things by region or grape type, or basing things on vintage date (Four ways to organize and manage your wine cellar). If so, then it is only within the groupings that things can get a bit vague.

Long ago, I decided that I want to control my vinous surprises, at least partly because I am not in the financial league that can afford to spend a lot of money on wine. (I know that I am not supposed to admit this: after all, a certain appearance of financial credibility is desirable in the world of wine cellars.)

My method actually grew out of necessity; and I mention it only because I have never heard anyone else suggest it. I did not have a basement or other separate location for storage; and nor could I afford a fancy place to store it (see Buying a wine cellar). So, the location was going to be in the bottom of a wardrobe or closet (where other people might keep their shoe collection). This is stable and dark if the cupboard is not opened very often. However, it seemed obvious that I should also keep the wine bottles within used wine boxes, which would enhance the temperate stability and darkness.

So, I simply decided to arrange the boxes by year of intended drinking. Upon purchase, I would decide on what might be a suitable year (or years), and I then stuck the wine (or wines) in the appropriate box (or boxes). When any box was full, it was sealed, and then remained undisturbed until the relevant year arrived.

At the beginning of January each year, I would open the appropriate boxes (4—5, if my wife and I have one good cellared wine per week). Then I would get my surprise, as I found out what wines I had squirreled away. Some I could remember buying, and some not. These bottles then get moved to a separate "drink soon" location, from which I select a wine each time I want one. The rest remain undisturbed.

So, like the squirrels, the hoard gets consumed while it is still in good condition. I like that, and I can certainly recommend it.

It is for this reason that I still use this system, even though I now have somewhere to store the wines in shelves, downstairs. A set of shelves is assigned to each year, and that is where I put new purchases. I do not need any fancy computerized inventory system to keep track of my bottles, and I do not need to worry about any of them missing their best drinking window. Nor do I need to hire a consultant to help me get organized; and I certainly don't have to remember what bottles I have, unless I especially want to.

I can still, of course, worry about the storage conditions, especially if the humidity gets a bit high, which it can do in summer. There must, after all, be something to wonder about, or why have a wine collection at all? As Leonard S. Bernstein once noted (The Official Guide to Wine Snobbery): "Every wine snob respects the thermostat."

Does bottle price have anything to do with cellaring desirability?

I recently asked the question: How soon is wine consumed after purchase? This inevitably involved the topic of cellaring wines, since most wine production seems to be intended for consumption within 1—3 years of bottling. Indeed, only c. 10% of the people surveyed said that they preferred to cellar their wines.

Having a wine collection seems to be associated with a certain amount of wine snobbery, although we might prefer to see this as "wine interest", instead. Another aspect of snobbery is, of course, cost. Having expensive bottles in the cellar is much "better" than having cheap ones, as explained in Leonard S. Bernstein's 1982 classic The Official Guide to Wine Snobbery.

The obvious question, then, is: Does the wine price have anything to do with cellaring desirability?

One possible source of data to answer this question comes from Wine Ark, one of Australia’s leading wine storage companies. You can read a bit about the company in: A conversation with Wine Ark.

Wine Ark periodically releases a list of Australia's Top 50 Most Collected Wines, based on how many customer bottles they have in their storage. So, I have had a look at Australia’s Most Collected Wines 2019. These are graphed below (in order from the top), along with the Wine-Searcher "Avg. USD Price (ex-tax)" for the most recent vintage release. Note that the price uses a logarithm scale in the graph.

Well, it seems to me that there is not a very strong relationship between cellar popularity and price. For example, the three most expensive wines are ranked 1st, 15th and 21st, while the three cheapest are 8th, 37th and 40th.

However, the top 25 wines are, on average, 50% more expensive than are the bottom 25, at US$121 versus US$88. Furthermore, the rank-order correlation between cellaring and price is 0.274 (p=0.056, for those of you who want to know), indicating a general decrease in price with fewer stored bottles.

So, the answer to the question posed in the title is: Yes, more-popular cellar wines do tend to cost more than less-cellared ones. However, even within a single company wine price does not always correlate with cellaring (eg. the Penfolds wines, and the Wynns Coonawarra Estate wines).

Also, there is not much relationship to availability. Some of these wines are produced in quite large commercial quantities, and are available world-wide (eg. the Wynns Coonawarra Estate wines), while others are much more specialist (eg. the Yarra Yering wines, or the Mount Mary wines).

This leads me to wonder whether it is only Australians who behave like this, or whether this is a much more general cellaring pattern. After all, many people think that an Australian wine cellar must look something like this:

Cellar musings

I rarely write “wine posts”, as opposed to “data posts”, in the sense that I usually write about the wine-data aspects of the wine industry, rather than about the personal aspects of wine. Today, I though that I might do the latter, just for a change.

In some ways, this is in response to Tom Maresca’s current musings on Desert islands, fantasy cellars, and other such vinous misdirections. He is on the right track, as usual, but I don’t agree with everything Tom has to say; and hence my own musings here about wine cellars.

I have never had any aspirations to have a wine cellar, although my current abode does have a subterranean storeroom, and there is wine in it. Indeed, there are quite a few bottles, either in it, or somewhere else around the house. The same cellar also has my wife’s wine-making equipment, for making fruit wines, the current fruit wines themselves (she makes a pretty good gooseberry wine), and the results of her jam and jelly making activities.

The only reason for me having a cellar is the same as Tom’s — I cannot afford mature wine, so I prefer to buy it young and mature it myself. It does not take many years of storage to turn a good wine into a very good one. If my wife and I drink one matured wine per week, then I need 4 dozen wines per year, which leads to a simple calculation about how many wines I need in storage.

The cellar collection is not a fantasy one, by any means, nor one for a desert island. It is simply a bunch of wines that I have accumulated over the years, either as recommendations from someone else, the current vintages of wines I like, or wines I have picked up when traveling. This sounds pretty standard, to me.

What is not standard is the arrangement of the stored wines. I have always stored them the same way, for all of the past 30 years. This started as a necessity, when the bottles were in boxes in the bottom of a wardrobe or cupboard. The only way I could access anything was to have all of the wines of the same maturity in the same box. That is, the box was labeled with the year in which the contents should be consumed — not the place of origin, or the style of wine, but simply the time when I planned to drink them. I have kept things that way, although no longer out of necessity.

So, every January 1st I bring out into the dining room all of the bottles for the coming year. What a treasure trove it is, and what a lovely surprise to find out what I have! Wines I have been looking forward to; wines that I have forgotten, but can now reminisce about buying — where and when and why; and wines that I have no recollection of ever acquiring, let alone why I did so. Vinously, this is definitely the best day of the year.

From then on throughout the year, I dig into this upstairs part of the collection — the drink-now part of the cellar — every time I want a mature wine. This is, of course, supplemented by the drink-now wines that I buy during the remainder of the year, such as rosés, fruity whites and young reds. Mature wines are best, but they should not be the sole diet of a wine drinker.

The other thing that seems to be odd for most wine collectors is that I rarely buy more than one bottle of any given wine. To me, there are simply too many interesting wines on this planet for me to want to repeat myself. Sure, I miss out on following the development of particular wines, which seems to be so fascinating to other people; but, instead, I get to explore a far greater part of the wine world than do most people. For the same number of bucks, I can travel further in the wine world than I could if I bought six of everything.

The wines themselves are mostly from Australia and the European Union. Australia is where I first found out about wine, and is therefore the vinous world I know best. The EU is where I have lived for nigh on 20 years now, and therefore is the one I have learned about most recently.

At one stage I started to focus on the wines of Sicily, just before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon. Now, everyone knows about the brilliant wines from Mt Etna, which can challenge the produce of Burgundy, the fortified wines of Marsala, which give the wines of Jerez a run for their money, and the grapes such as Nero d'Avola and Nocera that winemakers around the world are eyeing as potential saviors in response to climate change. Getting there before the crowd is my only claim to vinous prescience.

This leads to Tom Maresca’s “question anyone knowledgeable about wine is constantly asked: What’s your favorite wine?” To which he claims “the only sensible answer is: The one I’m drinking right now.” I doubt this. The one I am drinking now may be a mistake, either because it is no good, or because I am drinking it with inappropriate food. For me, my favorite wine is the next one, even though I do not yet know what it will be.

I entirely agree, however, when Tom whispers in our collective ears: “Let me let you in on a nasty little wine world secret: Fabled wines can disappoint just as readily and just as often as more ordinary ones.” You better believe it! First Growth Bordeaux is rarely worth the money, based on my experience, and neither are the top wines of Australia or the USA.

Nor, of course, are older wines necessarily any better than their younger selves. There was a time, not that long ago, when it was possible to get Barolo wines from the late 1950s for not too much money, if you searched carefully on eBay (wine is permitted on eBay throughout western Europe). Some of them were very good, fortunately. However, Tom’s recommendation to “focus more realistically on wines that can give you nearer-term pleasure” is also the best advice I could give.

Besides, we need to store a few wines now, because who knows what wines climate change will have us drinking in a few years time. I have not seen this point made before; but in a changing world, we need to preserve a bit of the past.

Estimates of cork taint from the Wine Spectator Napa office

The Wine Spectator magazine's Napa office tracked the number of apparently cork-tainted bottles in their tastings of California wines from 2005 to 2016, reporting their results at the beginning of the next year. There has been no report on the situation in 2017; and James Laube, who wrote the reports, has recently retired from regularly doing the California tastings (Wine Spectator announces changes in California wine reviewers). So, this could be an appropriate time to review their data.

Each year, all of the bottles tasted in the Napa office were assessed for "off" aromas. For bottles with corks, taint is usually caused by the presence of the chemical trichloroanisole (TCA) in the cork, but there are other potential sources of off smells. For example, the Cork Quality Council also lists 1-octen-3-ol, 1-octen-3-one, and guiacol.

Whatever the source, the data in the following graph refers to the "off" wines as a percentage only of those bottles with corks. Obviously, the data show that the percentage of tainted wines has improved through time.

Indeed, the trend looks impressively like cork quality is steadily improving. However, as I mentioned in a previous post (Drawing lines through a graph of points — what does this mean?), fitting a trend line to a graph can be a deceptive business. For example, the dashed pink lines in this next version of the graph highlight a different pattern — that tainted wines decreased between 2009 and 2010, but have otherwise remained relatively steady before and after then. Maybe something happened at that time?

Either way, the cork industry is usually reported to have a much lower estimate of cork failure than is shown in the graph above, typically 1-2 percent. This estimate was clearly not believable 10 years ago, and it is still half of that reported by the Wine Spectator, even now.

The cork manufacturers (mainly in Portugal) have been reported to be getting their act together, to improve the situation (eg. Taint misbehavin’: improving TCA testing methods to ensure cork quality). Improved testing may explain the apparent improvement between 2009 and 2010. The basic issue seems to be getting the cork wood clean, so that it can be turned into wine stoppers. Indeed, the industry is claiming that they will have eradicated TCA by the year 2020.

This raises the point as to why we use corks for wine bottles in the first place. Vidon Vineyard has this to say on the matter:

The main reason corks remain the predominant closure is tradition; change doesn’t come about easily in many fields. As long as one is willing to accept an occasional bad bottle of wine, corks are fine.

In any case, it seems clear that consumers often associate corks with high-quality wines (The effects of wine bottle closure type on perceived wine quality).

Vidon Vineyard's comments raise another important point:

A problem is that much of the time a cork-tainted wine isn’t recognized as such, but is passed off as “just not a good wine”, which means it’s the winemaker’s fault. And oftentimes a slightly tainted wine is consumed as “not too bad”, while if it could be tasted alongside an untainted wine with the same label, the reaction may have been “wow, this is great”!

Given that most wines are drunk within a few months of being released, the idea that we need corks in these particular wines seems to be ludicrous. Apart from anything else, untwisting a screw cap is so much easier!

On the other hand, we might also be concerned about the fate of the Cork Oaks (Quercus suber) themselves. These trees are owned and managed by farmers, who need to make a living from their land. If they can no longer make money from their cork trees, then those trees will be under threat of being replaced by some other crop. According to the Cork Quality Council, 37% of the cork forests are in Portugal (and 27% in Spain), where 50% of the cork production is centered (with 31% in Spain) — so, this is where the effect will be felt. In 2015, wine corks represented 72% of the Portugese cork industry's value, worth €644 million. This is not an inconsiderable industry, which will exert pressure to keep the Oaks.

How long should we cellar our wines?

A few weeks ago I raised the issue of how long we should keep our newly purchased wines, in order to drink them while at their best. Most of us have no idea about how to decide this, so we might seek advice from people who possibly know more than we do. However, it is usually rather hard to do this, unless the actual winemaker has suggested something.

This because most wine writers seem to either: make rather generic statements (eg. based on the origin of the wine), or be very vague (eg. short-, medium-, long-term cellaring), or ignore the topic entirely. I don't blame them. There are two parts to the problem of making such a decision: (i) where are the wines being stored? and (ii) why are you storing them? Recently, Tom Maresca wrote a blog post addressing both issues with respect to his own cellar (Tales from the crypt: a cellar story):

Most collectors would scream with horror at such an uncontrolled repository for their wines, but I’m not a collector and never have been ... The wines I’ve stored over the years have been a hodge-podge ... So if less-than-perfect storage conditions meant speeding up their maturation — in effect adding a few years to their calendrical age — that was and is no problem for me. In fact, it’s an advantage, since I have no plans to bequeath a cellar to my heirs and assigns, and I’d like to taste these wines while I still have functioning taste buds.

Well, like Tom, I am cellaring my wines for my own drinking, and my storage conditions are less than perfect. How do I decide when to open each bottle?

Some data

I decided that I would find out what sort of advice I get given. Since few commentators provide the required quantitative information (ie. some actual drinking dates), I ended up falling back on my trusty Australian wine experts (as I have done in previous blog posts).

There are three I found who have, at least in the past, provided a range of actual years that they consider to be the "peak drinking window" for the wines they have reviewed: Jeremy Oliver, James Halliday, and the Wine Front. The first two commentators are individual people, while the third one is a group of three people (Mike Bennie, Campbell Mattinson, Gary Walsh), any one of whom may have provided the commentary.

I have been recording their data whenever I consulted their writings about an Australian wine. So, there is nothing planned about the following data — it is simply whatever wines I have researched over the past couple of years, and for which all three critics have provided a minimum and maximum recommended drinking year. All of the wines are considered to be worth cellaring (otherwise I wouldn't need the data!), and therefore most of them are red (and, coincidentally, none are sparkling).

I got to a total of 111 wines, before I decided to write this post. I checked 194 wines, but only these 111 had complete data from all three sources. The following two graphs summarize the data for these 111 wines. Each of them is a frequency histogram, in which the vertical axis counts the number of wines fitting into each of the categories represented horizontally. The three commentators are shown in different colors.

The first graph shows the actual cellaring ranges suggested by each critic — that is, the number of years between their earliest suggested drinking date and the final suggested date (ie. the length of the drinking window). Note that, since it is the same 111 wines shown for each critic, the three superimposed graphs would be identical if the critics perfectly agreed with each other. Clearly, not only are they not identical, they differ quite a lot.

So, there is not much agreement between the three sets of suggestions:

• Jeremy Oliver's suggestions show two peaks of time (technically, the data are bimodal), with peaks at 4-5 years and at 9 years, presumably representing his idea about short- and long-term cellaring;
• James Halliday's suggestions are also rather bimodal, but with peaks at 6 years and 9 years — plus, there are a lot of much longer times, as well;
• the Wine Front suggestions are only slightly bimodal, with most of the suggestions being in the range 6-9 years.

So, it seems that, while the suggestions differ, it is the Wine Front that differs the most — Oliver and Halliday pretty much ignore 7-8 years as a storage time. Furthermore, for one-fifth of the wines there is actually no overlap in the suggested drinking window between: (i) the Wine Front and Jeremy Oliver, or (ii) between Oliver and Halliday. A fat lot of help this is to me, as a person seeking advice!

Now let's look at the data in a slightly different way. The second graph shows each critic's suggested drinking window as a proportion of the total suggested window — that total length is the number of years between the earliest suggested date from any of the critics and the last date suggested by any of them.

James Halliday is often the one who determines the maximum value of the window (represented by the big orange peak at the right), making him the most optimistic about how long the wines will last. Jeremy Oliver's suggestions are often only 40-50% of the length of the total window, while those from the Wine Front are often more than that. So, Oliver's suggested lengths average about 88% of those of Halliday and 82% of the Wine Front's, while Halliday's average is about 27% longer than those of the Wine Front.

This means that Oliver is the most cautious in making his prognostications — he suggests shorter drinking windows. Perhaps he is less optimistic about the conditions under which wine will be stored by most people? Interestingly, Halliday no longer makes suggestions for the upper limit of his drinking windows. Perhaps he has realized that wine-storage conditions make this particular prognostication fraught with danger?

Conclusions

There is not much agreement between the three sources of cellaring information. This matches the situation for wine-quality scores, where disagreements among commentators abound, as I have discussed before.

I can see why most wine commentators refrain from being too precise about how long to cellar any given wine. Not only are they making a forecast about each wine's future development, they have to contend with unknown but probably less-than-ideal storage conditions. This is a pity, because I still have to somehow make my decision, every time I buy a bottle of wine. I can also see why wine-interested people often buy multiple bottles of each vintage — at least one of them might be drunk when the wine is at its peak!