Two Newbie Questions

Greetings to all. I've just begun learning about wine a few weeks ago, and I have a couple of questions:

1. Regarding storage: I've heard that it's proper to store bottles horizontally. To what degree is this true, and why?

2. It seems that of all varietals, Cabernet Sauvignon is best served aged. What are your recommendations for inexpensive Cabs served right off the shelf? It seems that, according to the labels, most are already a couple of years older than other wines.

Welcome to WLDG, Lyle. Please keep coming back.

There are two reasons for storing wine horizonally.

1. If they are closed with natural cork, horizonal storage keeps the cork wet and prevents -- or at least slows down -- oxygen entering the wine.

2. Since cork has been the closure of choice for so long, most wine racks are made so that bottles can be stored horizonally; they can be purchased cheaper than other types of storage systems.

If the bottle is screwcapped, it can be stored in any direction with no problems.

If the bottle has an artificial cork, it probably can be stored in any direction, but for safety sake, store it horizonally, again to reduce the possibility of oxygen entering the bottle.


On aging of wines, there are many different types of grapes -- some are delicious right after bottling, some are great then but can get better with more time. Cabernet Sauvignon is in the second category -- the strong tannins often soften over time and make Cabs more delicious later.

But one can't really generalize -- some Cabs are great young, other take ten or more years to be enjoyable. And the same is true with other grapes.

We'd be glad to give you some suggestions for Cabs that drink well when they are young, but it would be very helpful if you could indicate what price point you are interested in.

Regards, and again welcome. Bob

Welcome to the WLDG! Regarding your questions:

1) Horizontal storage: The sole purpose of this is to keep the corks wet, so that the cork remains swollen with moisture at its base and thus provides a proper seal to keep wine from leaking out and air from leaking in.

If you're planning on storing wines for months or years, then this is important. If you're only going to store the wine for days or weeks, it hardly matters.

If the wine does not have a cork enclosure, but rather a screwcap, then there's no problem at all with storing it upright, even over the long term.

2) Cabernet sauvignon as a varietal wine tends to be more tannic than, say, pinot noir. As a rule of thumb it therefore can benefit from a few years to allow the tannins to soften. That being said, most cabernet sauvignons, as with most wines of all sorts, are vinified for early consumption. They may improve with a year or two in the cellar, but in general they'll fall apart if kept a decade or more.

Note that I am NOT talking here about the great estates of Bordeaux, California, Australia, etc., all of whom make wines with cabernet sauvignon as a significant player that are intended for very long aging, indeed.

Inexpensive cabs served right off the shelf? Hawk's Crest comes to mind. The parent estate, Stags Leap, produces several wines intended for long aging and sold at nose-bleed prices, but the Hawk's Crest line gets a nod from me for good bang for the buck.

-Paul W.

Thanks. By the way, I seem to have experienced my first "corked" wine. What's peculiar is that the next two bottles were off as well. All three bottles were gifts, not personally selected, which I figured might explain the coincidence. I suspected at first that maybe it's my underdeveloped palate, but subsequent sniffing and tasting proved awful, especially compared to recent tasting of the same types of wine from other bottles. I asked about storage because I was wondering if that might have something to do with it.

"Corked" refers to a specific fault--the presence of trichloroanisol (TCA), a chemical that those gifted (cursed?) with the ability to taste it can detect in miniscule parts-per-trillion concentrations. Yet there are others who can't taste it at all.

The TCA taint has been described mainly by smell. It has the aroma of wet cardboard, or a musty basement, or a toilet bowl. A similar sort of musty taste pervades the wine, as well, usually obscuring almost any other sensory qualities. All too many's the time I brought up a bottle from my cellar, opened it, took a first taste, exclaimed, "Oh, no! Not again!', grabbed a second bottle, opened it, tasted it, and breathed a sigh of relief that it, too, wasn't tainted.

As a newbie, IMO it would be worthwhile to intentionally seek out a corked wine to taste, just so that you know what the characteristic is so you will recognize it again when you encounter it.

I can't say whether or not the wines you cite were corked, but it definitely sounds plausible, especially since you've had other wines of the same time (and I assume the same vintage?) that were OK.

Bad storage causes other faults. For example, a wine being "cooked" due to exposure to high temperature. This tends to give the wine that might taste, say, of black cherries and plums, instead the taste of raisins and stewed prunes. It's hard to describe, but once encountered, after that you know it when you see it. But this is a completely different matter from a wine being corked.

The real bad part is that TCA strikes seemingly at random--some of the best estates have been afflicted. This is why quite a few top wineries are taking serious looks at non-cork enclosures.

-Paul W.