Axel’s experiment

[jdaw1]

I do have an experiment running since 2002. I placed a lot of bottles of Chateau Poujeaux 1999 at different places outside the cellar in my house. I will start to drink them from 2012 on to see if a 10y temperature, humidity, vibration and light change will have an effect on the evolution on this wine as I do have a perfect wooden box in the cellar.

Please report back on that experiment. I am most interested in the outcome.

Axel: please share the results. What matters? What doesn’t?

[mosesbotbol]

Wow, can't wait to hear the outcome with plenty of details.

[Axel P]

On the weekend I opened up most of the bottles and compared them. Background: I always put pairs together in one location: one bottle laying down, one standing up. Whenever I saw the bottles standing up (between two times a day and once every two weeks) I shook the bottle standing upright quite well to see wether the shaking would harm the wines.

Results in general: No difference in taste whatsoever between the bottle standing upright and the one laying down from the same location and - because of the experiment was going on for only 10 years - only little difference in the filling level.

In my attic I had two pairs, one was exposed to sunlight and the other was just stored well too hot in summer and too cold in winter. That was the pair with the biggest difference, but I guess this is more because of the excessive heat than excessive light. The pair exposed to sunlight regularly was fully baked and not enjoyable.

The warmer the wine was stored the more evolved they were, which is not a bad thing if you want your wines to drink soon, but shortens the life capacity in total.

My personal lesson learned: I dont care if my wine cellar has variations in temperature from 10-17 deg through the year and I defintely do not buy a wine cooler storage facility or climate control to have the wines at a constant temperature, free from any movement and with no light, except if you want your wines/ Port go the longest way possible.

In 2011 we had a comparative tasting between two Niepoort 70 bottles (and 20 other old Niepoort vintages), of which one was stored too cold. This Port was amazingly fresh and young, but was it better because of this?

Axel

[ajfeather]

Thanks for sharing your results!

[Alex Bridgeman]

Really interesting experiment. Thank you for sharing the results!

[uncle tom]

An interesting experiment indeed.

The great unanswerable question is whether a slow matured wine is ultimately better than one that has been fast-tracked in a warmer cellar - one can never compare the two bottles at the same level of maturity.

I think most people like to believe that slow maturation is better, but that may just be driven by the fascination of drinking very old wines that are still in perfect condition.

The more pragmatic however, argue that the less time a bottle takes to be ready to be drunk, the better.

Personally I don't think it makes a huge difference, provided storage temperatures don't go running into the high twenties, or suffer day/night fluctuations, but even then I'm not without some doubts.

An interesting new experiment would be to take a few bottles of young VP and keep them at a steady 30C for five years - then see if they are either wrecked - or fast matured..

[jdaw1]

Very interesting. Thank you.

[Andy Velebil]

Interesting indeed, thanks

An interesting new experiment would be to take a few bottles of young VP and keep them at a steady 30C for five years - then see if they are either wrecked - or fast matured..

Tom, I agree. This would be a very interesting study to undertake.

[uncle tom]

It wouldn't be that difficult to do..

Maybe take an old refrigerator, and reverse its role; putting a simple heating element with a thermostat in the bottom, and keeping it in a building where the outside temperature never gets to 30C or more.

The insulation in the fridge walls could be supplemented with slabs of insulating foam to keep the energy costs down, and a thermometer with a remote probe could be used to check the inside temperature from time to time without opening the door.

A quick calculation suggests that if the fridge unit is a small domestic unit with 4" of added insulation, with a mean outside temperature of 12C (typical unheated UK garage) the mean energy input needed would be somewhere around the 10W mark, or about £25/yr.

The heating element could be simple 2700 ohm 25W wire wound resistor, coupled to a domestic thermostat. Assuming the fridge is free, the total cost of the equipment could be as little as £75.

Thus over a five year experiment period, the total cost could be as little as £200 - plus a little bit of floor space - which is quite affordable.

All that is needed is to persuade a few producers to donate a few bottles in the interests of science..

If the fridge was loaded with half a dozen pairs of bottles, half could be removed and tasted after five years, and if not ruined, the other half could be left for a further five years.

[jdaw1]

! with bottles from the same case stored cool and dark, and more stored cool and light.

[Axel P]

Tom,

I fully share your ideas and believe so, too. The point I wanted to make sure on this experiment: Rather spend money on some good bottles if your cellar is ok, than spend money on wine-refrigerators who pretend to have the perfect condition for the wine.

I think the experiment with the Vintage Ports should be 20-25 deg. compared to 10-15 deg. and I am happy to do this with the 2013 Vintage, for reasons I will tell you in a bit of time.

Axel

[djewesbury]

I think the experiment with the Vintage Ports should be 20-25 deg. compared to 10-15 deg. and I am happy to do this with the 2013 Vintage, for reasons I will tell you in a bit of time.
Axel

Now must be the time for you to reveal your reasons, Axel!

[uncle tom]

Axel's 2013 reason remains a mystery..

Whatever.. with the very sound 2011 vintage just released, this has to be a good time to launch a formal experiment.

Ask maybe four principal houses (Taylor, Graham, Niepoort, Noval ?) to provide two dozen bottles of their wines, and keep them in perhaps four regulated environments, - 10c, 15c, 20c & 25c - and pull one bottle of each after 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, & 30yrs.

The supplying producers could then be be invited to each five year investigation, and be given the resulting notes.

The cost to the participating companies would be pretty minimal in the overall scheme of things, and the outcome very informative..

[djewesbury]

This is what I love most about , the research & education is taken so seriously

[jdaw1]

Ask maybe four principal houses (Taylor, Graham, Niepoort, Noval ?) to provide two dozen bottles of their wines, and keep them in perhaps four regulated environments, - 10c, 15c, 20c & 25c - and pull one bottle of each after 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, & 30yrs.

So one of us is to buy a wine fridge, and keep it running for 30 years at precisely 25°C?

Assuming that we have a volunteer for that, some bottles should be rotated between the temperatures to test whether variation is as bad as is thought.

[uncle tom]

some bottles should be rotated between the temperatures to test whether variation is as bad as is thought

You could come up with an almost unlimited list of permutations to trial...

However, I think it is fairly well accepted that moderate seasonal temperature fluctuations are not a big issue, whilst frequent day/night fluctuations accelerate ullage and consequent oxidation.

The question that has not been properly addressed is whether long term storage at steady but moderately elevated temperatures is as injurious as is often assumed.

The conditions presumed to be optimal by various writers closely match those of deep English cellars, yet it is clear that both the lodges in Gaia and the cellars of Bordeaux have a tendency to reach much higher temperatures, yet with little evidence of consequent damage.

A properly conducted long term trial to examine that specific aspect seems warranted.

[jdaw1]

it is fairly well accepted that

Much that is true, and some that is false, admits of the description ‟fairly well accepted”. The object is to test these things.

[Glenn E.]

I think it is fairly well accepted that moderate seasonal temperature fluctuations are not a big issue, whilst frequent day/night fluctuations accelerate ullage and consequent oxidation.

The question that has not been properly addressed is whether long term storage at steady but moderately elevated temperatures is as injurious as is often assumed.

I agree for the most part. I think that small day/night fluctuations under, say, 5 degrees F are also not a big issue at normal (55 degrees F) cellar temperatures. I believe that a quality wine refrigerator set to 55 degrees F is not going to affect long term storage for Port.

[DRT]

I think it is fairly well accepted that moderate seasonal temperature fluctuations are not a big issue, whilst frequent day/night fluctuations accelerate ullage and consequent oxidation.

A bold statement! We have all purchased ullaged and/or oxidised bottles, but do any of us really understand how they came to be that way? I think we don't. We all set out with the objective of buying well-cellared stuff and sometimes we are disappointed. But we never (or very, very rarely) know the reason for the disappointment.

In contrast to Tom's statement above, wines stored for decades in VNG, where day/night temp variations are small but seasonal variations are huge, age faster than wines stored in UK cellars. But VNG stored bottlings tend to have good levels, therefore seasonal temperature fluctuation and ullage seem to have no direct correlation.

My view is that low levels are due to two main factors: low filling at the time of bottling and crap corks. The angel's share from a bottle with a good seal over a few decades is, at best, not enough to drown a flea. Turn the heat up and burst the seal and you will notice a difference in both level and oxidation, but mild fluctuations in temperature, whether daily, monthly or annually, will not significantly affect the evaporation of liquid through a sound cork.

[djewesbury]

This conversation is fascinating, not least because everyone who has contributed has a slightly different view of what are the most significant detrimental factors to good ageing; thus, designing an experiment that could take account of all these finely nuanced firm convictions (and hunches) will be a challenge. So far this thread has thrown up about half a dozen different experiments (or variations on one experiment), taking into account all the "yes, and then you could..." comments. There is certainly a good deal of confusion around the relative importance of annual / seasonal / daily temperature fluctuations (and the added VNG factor foxes me completely).

It strikes me that we could experiment away for the next 30 years in our respective garages, only to discover that we can do nothing about merchants who keep their stocks in crap stores. As I said to a member here recently, I am surprised by the number of respected wine merchants who store their ports standing up in a warm shop. But the only way I can prove that this has a detrimental effect on their ports is to buy a sample of what's on their shelves and compare it with stock they have in store, and then report back to them. I'm not prepared to do this; but I am inclined, with no proof or additional information, to put the bad bottles I've bought and drunk here down to that storage.

Many people here report that they see only one or two poorly kept, badly deteriorated (non-TCA) wines a year. I'm amazed by this, and I must just have a very low strike rate. But then, it stands to reason that the further away you are from the main centres of consumption the more likely you are to find bad bottles, which may have been poorly stored for 30 or 40 years. This risk of buying bad juice is yet another premium that is added on to the basic cost of VP, and it's a very significant deterrent to the casual drinker; which is bad for all port drinkers...

Better hygiene, better corks, better-made and better-balanced wines could have the effect of pushing the price of port down, by making it a product more able to withstand negligent storage and thus drunk more widely. I appreciate that this would only happen in a fantasyland of my own imagining; here in the real world, a less unpredictable product automatically means a higher price tag (witness the very buoyant 2011 prices).

[Axel P]

Now must be the time for you to reveal your reasons, Axel!

The reasons for this is that I am getting the producers to donate 750kgs of their prime grapes for a charity Vintage Port and have all the VIPs from the Producers to tread in a lagar together.

I will start a post on this soon.

If you are around on Sep 15/22nd in the Douro, come by and see.

Axel

[djewesbury]

If you are around on Sep 15/22nd in the Douro, come by and see.

I will be, and shall see you there!