Collecting wine and building a cellar

By John Ash - Los Angeles Times Syndicate

(Los Angeles Times Syndicate) -- OK, I have to admit it. My two great passions in life are enjoying food and wine. As a chef for more than 25 years, I've had a chance to cook and sample all manner of food, but the topper, the epiphany for me was to have that food in the company of an interesting wine.

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I can still remember the first "serious" wine that I had many years ago. It was serious because it had a cork rather than a screw top. It was an old bottle of Inglenook Cabernet, one of the original and great wineries in California. A friend pulled it from his cellar to share at a dinner that I was preparing that featured some wild game. I've forgotten what I prepared, but I've never forgotten that wine. It was a perfect accompaniment -- the wine made the food taste better and vice versa.

That day I learned the most important rule about enjoying wine and that is that wine should also be seen as food. It is just another part of the plate of flavors in front of you -- all to be enjoyed together.

(It's why I have such a problem with some people who insist on rhapsodizing about the wine and ignoring the food, or competitions in which wines are compared without bouncing them off against food. The two are meant to be enjoyed together, with neither being more important than the other, and they do change in each other's company.)

When I discovered how much I loved wine with my food, I began to collect like a mad man. Every time I tasted something new that I liked I'd buy a case. It was at this time that I learned the importance of a good wine merchant. Someone that you could talk to, who likes what you like and can speak about it knowledgeably.

I lived in a small house in San Francisco then that fortunately had an old dirt cellar that was uniformly cool. Unfortunately, it was also damp and "au naturale" and before I knew it, had molds, and little field mice chewed through most of the cases and labels making them unrecognizable. Also in my zeal I lost track of what I had. Record keeping wasn't high on my list of priorities then.

I had to have a meeting with myself and answer at least three big questions:

• How much wine could I realistically expect to consume before it began to fade?
• How much could I afford? I unfortunately was becoming a bit addicted and was beginning to collect some impressive trophy wines.
• How much space did I have to properly store the wine, and what did it mean to "properly store"?

This last question is the topic of this article and it begins with the realization that wine is a "living" thing. Like it or not, from the moment that a wine is bottled there is a gradual, seemingly imperceptible but absolutely inevitable, change in the flavors of the wine. Two bottles filled with the same wine and stored under the same conditions will be different over time.

In the beginning the young fruit flavors dominate, but over time they soften and diminish through the action of chemical changes (basically aging of the polymers) and sometimes bacteriological influences.

The "loss" of the primary, up-front fruit flavors will usually (but not always) be more than offset by the gain in secondary flavors and characteristics. Even with all the tools that modern science has for analysis -- such as gas chromatographs or ultraviolet and infra-red spectrophotometers -- the reasons for the flavors that develop are still not clearly understood.

Unfortunately, the whole question of which wines to age and for how long is never too clear. Because none of us has exactly the same preferences and tastes, you, in the final analysis, have to be your own judge and jury. This means that you'll need to monitor the progress of your wine by sampling a bottle or two over time to determine when it has hit its peak for you.

Obviously, however, this is one of the great reasons to have a cellar. Again, a good merchant can help counsel you in this process and give you some time ranges to operate within. Usually (but not always) the best candidates for cellaring are red wines with their tannins and color (mostly anthocyanins). As these slowly change because of the interaction with oxygen introduced at bottling time and also through a "seepage" through the cork, red wines will soften and gradually change color from deep purple to a brick red or tawny color.

Though reds are usually the best candidates for cellaring, it should be noted that some white wines will also age beautifully, even though they are much lower in tannin and have no anthocyanins at all. I can remember having old Rieslings from Germany or Vouvrays from France that when young were bright and crisp, and over time softened beautifully to flavors of rich butter, toast and Sherry. Both ends of their life were wonderful, but clearly different.

Perhaps the most important consideration, then, in the cellaring of wine is an understanding of how the cork works. Since it's a natural product (the bark of the cork tree), it will slowly allow a bit of oxygen to make its way into the wine. Because no two corks are the same and, in fact, no two necks of the bottle are exactly the same (so the cork will "seat" itself differently), these two elements together will allow more or less air or oxygen to meet up with the wine.

There's one other factor. The greater the air space between the bottom of the cork and the top of the wine (known as the ullage), the oxidation or chemical change in the wine will also speed up, even if slightly. Over a long time, corks will deteriorate and allow unacceptable amounts of oxygen to interact with the wine. This is why great "museum" wines are routinely recorked after a decade or two. The action of the cork, then, will have much to do with the successful life of the wine.

It must be noted here that because corks are sometimes not perfect and subject to variation (as are all things in nature), a better closure for a wine bottle is actually a plastic cork or the screw cap. Both are inert, seal better and are nearly perfect as closures. Plastic cork or screw-capped wines will still age, but much more slowly due to the fact that some oxygen is stored in the wine itself when it is made.

A number of blind tastings have been held over the years in many parts of the world and the conclusion has invariably been that plastic-corked or screw-capped wines were fresher and showed no cork flavors that sometimes show up in natural corked wines. Why don't we see more of these? I suspect we will as the quality of cork comes more into question. I think that a lot of the resistance to the use of these comes from the fact that a natural cork pulled from the bottle sounds infinitely more romantic than a plastic cork or screw cap.

Given the importance of the cork, then, there are at least three related components for an ideal cellar:

1. Constant and ambient temperature -- Having a constant temperature all year-round is actually more important than the degrees. A cellar that varies between 58 and 72 degrees during the day is not nearly as good as one that is consistently 70 degrees. Changes in temperature can become harmful because both the wine and the cork expand and contract, allowing a greater exchange of air or oxidation. The rule here is the lower consistent temperature the better, ideally around 56 to 58 degrees.
   
2. Good humidity -- Humidity in a cellar should be in the 70-percent range. Much lower than this and the cork begins to dry out. In the short term, the end becomes brittle and crumbles when you try to extract it with a corkscrew. Over the long term, with low humidity the cork will actually shrink and lose its elasticity, i.e. the end that is not in contact with the wine in its properly laid-down storage position. As a result, it becomes an imperfect seal and eventually allows more oxygen in than is desirable. Many wine cellars use air conditioners to maintain temperature. Unfortunately, conventional refrigeration units dehumidify the air substantially. It's why vegetables and cheese dry out so quickly when left unwrapped in the refrigerator. It's important to also have a humidifier in your cellar if you are using refrigeration in order to maintain cork "health."
   
3. Still air -- Though less important than the two conditions above, air movement, especially in cellars with air conditioning units, also have a tendency to dry out the ends of corks. It should be noted here that any kind of movement of the bottles should be kept to a minimum. You'll need to be careful not to draw out your prized wines and fondle them too much. Excess movement seems to affect the quality of the wine. This may be the reason that wines tasted near their birthplace don't taste the same once they've been shipped across an ocean.
   

A few other thoughts about collecting and cellaring wine:

• Wine is best kept in the dark. While incandescent or fluorescent lights seem to have no effect over the short term, long-term exposure to light can affect the quality of wine, especially whites and sparkling wines. In France, a lot of work has been done on the effect of ultraviolet rays on Champagne. Apparently in certain circumstances, ultraviolet can lead to the creation of hydrogen sulfide, which gives off an odor similar to rotten eggs or cabbage. The condition is known as gout de lumiere.
• Let wine rest in the cellar, especially precious old wines, after they've been transported. Active motion seems to "stir things up" and subtleties can be lost. A fragile old beauty may need a rest of two or more weeks before it's opened.
• Although attractive shelving can be beautiful in a cellar, I prefer to leave bottles in their cases. Cardboard cases are good insulators and bottles are protected even better when wrapped in newspaper. Both of these help maintain constant temperature and keep out the light.
• Wine as an investment. If you are serious enough to build a cellar, then it means you have some interest in wines. For a short time in my life, I actually got infatuated with the idea of buying wine, holding it in my cellar for a few years and then selling it at a gigantic (I hoped) profit. I came to realize that this isn't why I bought wine. I bought wine for the love of its flavor and, more important, to share it with my friends and family. To see it only for its commercial value demeaned why I came to it in the first place.
• Collecting more wine than I'll ever consume. I have finally resolved this issue. I've given myself permission to collect as much as I can afford, never to hoard it, but to share it at every opportunity. If there is some left over in my cellar when I pass on, then what a wonderful gift to my children and friends.