The time has come to check the temperature of your wine storage area. Research has shown that a wine that is kept under your stairs at normal room temperature can mature much more rapidly than expected!
For years, experts have been telling us to store our wines in adequate premises. To-day scientists have turned their attention to this long debate, proving that a wine that’s stored in a house at room temperature has the capacity of maturing wine up to four times faster than a wine stored at 13ºC in a wine cellar.
A first study has been carried out by Italian researchers, 400 bottles of “Sangiovese” were divided, for one half of them in a professional’s cellar, keeping the wine at temperatures varying between 15º to 16º C, the second lot was stored in a house at a temperature oscillating between 20 and 26ºC. The researchers discovered that small temperature variations accelerated several chemical reactions associated with the maturing of wines, as well as developing new chemical reactions that were absent from wines kept at lower temperatures.
It was noted that after six months of storage at room temperature, the bottles had aged as much as those that had been kept for two years under optimal storage conditions. In other words, a maturing rate that is four times higher!
Wines stored at “home” present fewer anti-oxidizing agents, fewer pigments, and above all, less taste.
Therefore, storing your cherished great vintages under your stairway is not really recommended. If you don’t have an adequate storage area, we recommend that you invest in a maturing cellar, without a glass door and at a constant temperature of 13ºC in the dark with a humidity level of 60%.
