temperture

[skygzsf]

hi all,

are there any sorts of risk to the wines store in constant high temperture? 30"c or above?
and what is the best room temperture for wine testing?

[joeyz6]

:0 Thirty degrees Celsius, if that is indeed what you meant to type, is far too hot to be exposing wine for more than a few minutes. The juice will quickly go bad at that temperature. Wine should be stored at about 12-13 degrees Celsius, certainly no more than 18 or 19 for any length of time.
For tasting (testing?) wine, use the following guideline:
Sparkling wine: 9-10 degrees
White wine: 10-12
Light reds: 15
Medium/full-bodied reds: 16-18

These are some estimates off the top of my head ... hopefully one of the real experts here will chime in and correct any errors.


[This message has been edited by joeyz6 (edited 08-14-2003).]

[skygzsf]

thanks joeyz6.

how about storing wines in thirty degrees Celsius for couple days, because in london we were experiencing high temp and i wonder if those wines in store might turn bad??

[Drew]

Sky, here's an interesting article from the Alchemist's wine perspective. Certainly wine is shipped and commercially stored at that temp or higher, unfortunately. Heat is far worse than cold. At your temp you probably risk a slight negative change to the flavor profile of the wine, eg. stewed fruit, prune and sherry like flavors and nose. The longer the exposure, the more damage.

Drew


http://science.csustan.edu/alchemist/Temperature.htm

[skygzsf]

Drew, thanks for the article, it was very interesteing and helpful.
however, it's a shock to me that a lot of wine shops in london don't have air condition to keep temp at 55F, instead the temp was 91F during the hottest summer in english history!

[Kcwhippet]

It's interesting that the author of the article didn't mention the Arrhenius equation. That's an equation that's used to calculate the change in a chemical reaction versus temperature. The basic equation states that the rate of a chemical reaction (which is what aging a wine really is) will double for every 18 F raise in temperature. Simply stated, a bottle of wine will age twice as fast at 73 F than at 55 F. Unfortunately, this isn't really a good thing with wine because it's a large conglomeration of chemical compounds and not all of them will react positively to an increased rate of aging.

[quijote]

This discussion makes me wonder how Foodie's wine fared at his NYC store during the blackout. I wonder how one might improvise to keep temps cool in the midst of such heat?

[Thomas]

Well, we wondered the same thing. We keep the store temperature between 69 and 71, which are the kick on and kick off temps of the a/c. On Thursday as soon as we figured out the outage was major, we closed the store (which is not in direct sunlight) to keep the doors closed. On Friday morning we had someone check the store; he said the temperature was about 72 F.

With all lights off and little sunshine, we managed to keep a fairly cool store for 17 hours of outage, and 94 F Friday temperatures.

My people checked bottles for signs of leaking--none--felt the bottles for warmth--not bad, I am told.

Perhaps the wines aged a little more than they should, but they will be drinkable for a while longer.

[quijote]

I'm glad it turned out okay, in spite of the business lost. Many years ago in California, a friend of mine lost dozens of French pastries--delicious, exquisite French pastries--due to power loss, and it took her a few days to get back into business.