Newbie wine question

I realize all of you already know this, which is why I'm asking. Please forgive the newbie-ness of this question. ^_^

What is it about storing a wine bottle upright that causes it to turn to vinegar?

If the cork is not kept moist by wine, it may dry out. Oxygen can then get in and oxidise the wine. I am not sure how long it takes for this to happen, but I think it is more than a few years. It will not necessarily turn to vinegar, but might do, and the oxidation is bad enough to spoil the wine anyway.

Bottles with screwcaps can be stored upright. And people say Champagne can, perhaps because of the wider cork, or perhaps because Champagne will have a CO2 blanket protection. Also heard that about Madeira, perhaps because it is already oxidised, and it is usually aged for most of the time in barrrel anyway.

What Steve said

In addition there are producers in Piemonte Italy that swear by upright storage. It's fair to say that many great bottles there have survived decades, but cork failures do exist and laying flat appears to be a sensible precaution. I suspect all of us here do it for anything that will be laid down for more than a year.

However if I have an old wine with a fair degree of sediment, I prefer to stand it upright for a few days/weeks before drinking as it makes it easier to pour. The tradition I'm told, when a wine is stored flat, is to store it with label upright and when pouring to keep the label upright to avoid disturbing the sediment.

regards

Ian

Yeah, what Steve said.

Keeping the bottle stored on its side means that the bottom of the cork is kept moist. Dry cork shrinks and pulls away from the side of the bottle, potentially allowing oxygen in. Keeping the cork moist keeps it swollen and providing an airtight seal.

If your bottle is capped with a screwcap or other non-cork enclosure, if anything you're better off storing it upright rather than on its side, since on its side there's the chance that if the non-cork enclosure fails, wine could leak out (and thus air leak in).

Madiera is the nearest thing to an immortal wine, and stylistically is supposed to be oxidized. If anything, accelerated oxidation might mean you don't have to wait 200+ years for your vintage Madeira to approach maturity. So it's unlikely to cause damage, at any rate, if you keep your Madeira bottles upright. Me, I still store them on their sides. Maybe it's just force of habit.

-Paul W.

I wouldn't worry about keeping bottles upright for a year or two. The cork won't shrink in that time.

I realize all of you already know this, which is why I'm asking. Please forgive the newbie-ness of this question. ^_^

Liz, You never have to apologize for asking good, honest questions. WLDG folks are quite friendly and like to share their wine knowledge. Keep them coming. -- Clark

there are producers in Piemonte Italy that swear by upright storage

Ian:

In a visit to Monforte d'Alba in 1982, I noted that the late Giovanni Conterno (Az. Agr. Giacoma Conterno) stored all his bottles upright; he scoffed at the notion that a wine had to be stored horizontally, noting that the quality of his corks (which he said were aged prior to bottling) was such that they would not fail even after years of upright storage in the cellar. I was never thoroughly convinced of this, and keep all my wines (including the few Conterno wines I have) stored on their sides.

marco

The flip side of the story is that if you have even a slightly substandard cork [not necessarily contaminated with tri-chloro-anisole, but just kinda generally rotten bark], then, with horizontal storage, eventually, over time, any yuckiness in the cork will work its way into the wine.

Bottom line is that a huge percentage of all ageworthy wines [anywhere from 10%, to 50%, or more] are doomed, on the bottling line, with a less-than-perfect cork.

Which gives rise to that old piece of [Gallic?] folk wisdom: There are no great wines, only great bottles of wine.

I realize all of you already know this, which is why I'm asking. Please forgive the newbie-ness of this question. ^_^

What is it about storing a wine bottle upright that causes it to turn to vinegar?

One of the interesting things that I've learned since I've been participating here is that wine with a bad or inadequate cork doesn't become vinegar. It just becomes bad wine - maybe oxidized, maybe just loses whatever made it special but not vinegar. You have to have a specific bacterial culture to turn wine into vinegar. It's called, "mycoderma aceti" and it doesn't just occur in the environment. You have to get some and innoculate your wine to turn it to vinegar. Here' a link to a fellow forumite's site wherein the manufacture of homemade vinegar is discussed: Gang of Pour
Oh, and I second everyone's opinion regarding questions - EVERYONE was a newbie at some point. Some of us still are.

Hi, Liz. I'm glad you asked the Q because I've always wondered about wine shops that store their goods upright on the shelves. One of the responses to your Q suggested that for a year or two this probably would not be a problem - which is good to know.

(If there's any new news on that horrible incident in Alfred last month, please send a PM if you have the time.)

You have to have a specific bacterial culture to turn wine into vinegar. It's called, "mycoderma aceti" and it doesn't just occur in the environment. You have to get some and innoculate your wine to turn it to vinegar. Here' a link to a fellow forumite's site wherein the manufacture of homemade vinegar is discussed: Gang of Pour
.

I used Kim's posts as pointers when I started my vinegar crock. I love my vinegar, fun to package up some for friends,

Lying a new bottle tilted a bit downward does indeed keep the cork moist and is what I've heard generally recommended. It seems to make little sense, however, if you don't tip the bottle a bit to keep the cork moist and swollen. I don't know whether this makes a difference with alternative closures such as synthetic corks or screw caps. I don't keep wines with such closures around long enough to find out. In fact, there are very few wines, even with corks, which survive long in my household. But I digress. From what I also hear tell, however, an open bottle does better standing up because less of the surface area of the wine is exposed to oxygen than when it is lying down. And, infidel that I am, I tend to keep any open wine I'm not going to drink the next day in the fridge to slow spoilage. To be sure, I have had some "spontaneous" vinegar occur, but I think that was a function of what was swarming invisibly in my ice box or maybe the wine maker left me a present in the bottle.

The science of bottle storage doesn't clearly support the need to lay the bottle on its side to moisten the cork, as long as the cellar has good humidity.

It may be that laying the bottle on its side has the advantage of easier access, and that is why Chateaux have done so over the centuries.