Ask Steve: Storing your Wine

One of the things I enjoy about attending the Cellar Club parties is the opportunity to chat with our interesting club members.  I never fail to get great topics for this column.  

While chatting with N and her husband, I realized that there are a few barriers that make it difficult for our members to age and enjoy older vintages of Witch Creek wines.  First is the expense of providing adequate storage, second is the challenge of finding space for the wine, and lastly is the problem of wine consumption (It’s all gone!).  Let me address these.

When Sally and I first started storing wines to age them, we had nothing in which to store them.  Then we discovered that we could pick any dark place on the north side of the interior of our abode and have ageing benefits.  We started by placing bottles into empty wine boxes that were on their side (a very important step – you don’t want the corks drying out!), under our bed.  You can use both sides of the bed, if necessary.  This provides a capacity of about 72 bottles and is zero cost (except for the wine)!  After some time, we exceeded our 72 bottle limit, but still wanted to store on the cheap.  We moved our wine to the floor of our bedroom closet and put the shoe racks atop the boxes, still a free storage option.  Your capacity here depends on the size of your closet and its depth as well.  When storing wine in these types of places, you cannot store as long as in a real cellar, so cut ageing to half of the recommended time.  So much for the first two problems!

The hardest problem to attack (and the only costly one) is the last one: getting the wine to age.  You can use your cellar club wine, but that strategy precludes your chance to taste it with a nice meal and then decide what to store.  One of the great features about Witch Creek’s club is that the two featured wines of the month are usually offered at a discounted rate for members all month long.  So I suggest that, after tasting. simply get additional bottles to store and adjust the quantity depending on how much you liked the wine(s).

“Is it worth all of this trouble to age wine?” you may ask.  Suffice to say, my motivation is the surprising enjoyment that I discover as a result of these efforts.  Perhaps you will find the same.  

See you at the next party!

~Steve Stredler