When it comes to storing wines, there are 4 bottle storage angles you’ll come across in wine cellars: horizontal, inclined neck-end up, standing upright and very occasionally, inclined neck-end down.
How do wines age? the Wine Enthusiast has a great article on this here:
https://www.winemag.com/2018/10/09/what-happens-wine-ages/
…But to paraphrase: Acids and alcohols react to form new compounds and the compounds dissolve and react with each other to form new compounds over time. This smooths the tannins, giving softer, more complex wine. Some compounds get so large they fall out of suspension and fall as sediment down to the punt or down to the side of the bottle, if stored horizontally.
There are two things all wine enthusiasts can agree on: Firstly that a constant, cool environment is best for ageing wine and secondly, that the cork should be prevented from drying out. The enemy of wine is air (more specifically oxygen) and this is why a magnum will age better than a smaller bottle (ratio of air/liquid being smaller). A dried cork will shrink, allowing more air to get to the bottle and causing premature oxidation, so a damp cork is imperative.
The bottle angle however… there are many schools of thought, so at Papillon we thought it best to design for all situations and ultimately let you decide when configuring your perfect rack space. Below are our musings on the subject. If you’re on the fence as to which strategy to employ, these thoughts may hopefully be of some help in deciding.
Let’s start with the easiest one: keeping your bottles bolt upright.
Advantages:
- Not all bottles have corks. Screw tops do not need to be kept moist, so keeping those screw tops upright will make no difference to the ageing process.
- A shelf of upright bottles is more efficient in terms of space
- Sediment that falls to the bottom of the bottle will stay in the punt when moving the bottles.
- Sometimes you may not want to age particular bottles, you may have just taken it out of bonded store to drink, so a shelf or two is never a bad idea.
Disadvantages:
- There is no liquid touching the cork, which dries up the cork and can cause the wine to age badly.
Second choice: keeping your wine horizontally.
By far the most common way to store wine. But note the position of the air bubble in the picture above. Any change in temperature, no matter how minute, will change the size of the bubble. As the room heats, the bubble expands; it cools and the bubble contracts. These can be minute changes, but the bubble will expand, displacing the wine. There is only one escape for the displaced wine: through the cork. It my go to explain those older bottles you have opened and found them not corked, but the cork is red most of the way up to the top, making the cork disintegrate when you pull it.
Advantages:
- Space saving, you can stack a lot of bottles in pyramids this way.
- The cork stays moist.
- If not stacked but in a single row, it’s easy to find the bottle you want.
- You can keep the bottles in their original boxes and stack those.
Disdvantages:
- If you stack them, they are hard to find (such as in a wine fridge).
- Cork does a lot of work and over time will let the wine through if temperatures fluctuate.
- Sediment does not settle in the bottom of the bottle. It will mix with the wine easily when moved.
- If it’s bubbly and the cork pops, that bubbly is all over the rest of your bottles and the floor.
Thirdly: keeping your wine at a set incline.
Our preferred way, but the way that took the most research as each bottle is different. Note where the bubble is in the picture above. There is enough wine touching the cork to keep it moist, yet if the bubble expands the air escapes through the cork easily. Small problem… the incline at which the liquid starts touching the cork is different for each shape of bottle, so we had to buy a large amount of different shape bottles, test at what incline the liquid started touching the cork, test at what angle the cork was totally covered by wine, and find a common angle that would suit all bottles. Then we drank them.
Advantages:
- Wine and air touches the cork.
- Sediment drops to the punt.
- Corks that don’t disintegrate.
- If bubbly, a popped cork doesn’t send the wine everywhere.
- An easy and aesthetically pleasing way to view a label.
- To test our theory you get to drink many different bottles.
Disadvantages.
- Slight loss of vertical space.
- Harder to manufacture so slightly more expensive, but “qui aime ne compte pas”.
- The morning after.
Lastly… keeping your bottles inclined, neck facing down.
We’ve seen this from time to time and can’t fathom the logic, frankly. This is not one of the choices we have designed for.
Advantages:
- Ease in construction of the rack unit itself: take a plank of wood, drill holes in it and put the neck in the hole, upside down.
- Aesthetics. You may just love the look.
- You can start a mini Caribbean-style steel band, but with bottles.
Disadvantages:
- You can’t see the label easily. Reading is upside down.
- One cork goes or a crew cap leaks, the wine is all over the floor.
- Sediment sticks to the cork and it falls through all the wine when turned upright.
- Bottle’s wine bubble is at the top, if it expands it pushes the wine through the cork.