deVine Thoughts

Author: Dirk Chan

They say wine enjoyment is 50% olfactory, well if that’s the case, you should be looking for some aged wines.  I’m always thrilled when that special wine that has me sniffing from the glass over and over again seamingly never needing to taste the wine. That ‘wow’ nose is when there’s flowers, tar, earth, minerals, tea,  chocolate, spice, barnyard etc.. – all those great descriptors of scents are what is known as secondary characteristics that develop with time in the bottle,  usually close to a decade of cellaring time.  Unfortunately, to get wines that have vintages starting with ’19’ nowadays means either you would have had to purchase them on release and kept it yourself for all this time, or you purchase from a retailer who has kept the wine in their storage facilities or sometimes the winery releases what’s known as library releases directly from the winery cellars.

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Author: Dirk Chan

I’ve had many requests for information from customers about what it takes to start their own wine cellars. There are several key items to address to see whether the intended storage space you have is suitable or not:

1) temperature – this is the key item to address, the ideal cellaring temperature is 13C (55F) which is the defacto standard because it mirrors the temperature of the caves in Champagne in France. If you’ve purchased wines that are in the hundreds of dollars and have a history of cellaring potential, then something that is steady around this temperature is a must.  For short term cellaring (up to 10 years), a little higher 16C is ok. The key point here is you’d rather have a stable and constant higher ambient temperature (16 or 17) then have the yo-yo effect where it is 22C during the day and 14C at night. If you have yo-yoing temperatures, then forget about cellaring, and buy your wines for current drinking.

  
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Author: Dirk Chan

It’s time to peak into the Cyrstal Ball and see what’s coming for 2009.  The economy will dictate tighter spending and more than ever, the Best Bang for the Buck wines will be doing well at least for the first quarter of 2009. In that regard, we will continue to look for well-priced gems out of Argentina, Portugal, Spain, southern France and southern Italy.

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