Do you need an actual cellar to cellar wine?

Some thoughts on my rather haphazard approach to cellaring wine - plus the latest episode of 'Intoxicating History' is out.

Yesterday the third installment of ‘Intoxicating History’ was released. It’s a subject that’s very close to Tom’s heart: eating and drinking in royalty. We cover everything from surfeits of lampreys to Princess Margaret’s love of Famous Grouse. Click on links to listen - I hope you enjoy it. There will be one more episode before Christmas asking whether the English really invented champagne.

Right, let’s get on with this today’s post…

I opened a bottle of Mas de Daumas Gassac 2013 in September that I’d be saving. For those who don’t know the estate, it was founded in the 1970s in Herault department in the Languedoc but rather than work with grenache, syrah, carignan etc that you might expect, instead founder Aime Guibert (who died in 2016) planted mainly cabernet sauvignon with about 20% other grapes including tannat, nebbiolo, pinot noir and others.

It’s a funny old wine as if you catch it at the wrong time it can be like the most aloof Medoc you’ve ever tasted, all austere and lacking in fun. Whereas alcohol levels are creeping up in Bordeaux, the cool micro climate of Mas de Daumas Gassac means the wines still come in at around 13%. In short MDG is not the happy go lucky boozy southern bundle of fun you might expect from its location.

That particular bottle is the last from a case that I bought from Berry Bros & Rudd during a brief period of affluence in 2015. The first bottle was drunk soon after purchase and was very accessible - lots of blackcurrant with a slatey refreshing quality like you might find in a Loire red. By 2017, however, it had gone into its sulky teen phase. In 2019 it began to venture out of its bedroom and was beginning to take on some stewed fruit and an exotic spiciness. That last bottle was positively opulent with cinnamon and cardamom but all the time with that Medoc-esque bite to it. Mas de Daumas Gassac when young tastes northern but goes progressively south as it ages - don’t we all, darling?

I bet Hugh Johnson doesn’t have a hoover in his cellar

This is a wine that has aged for nearly ten years in far from ideal conditions. Firstly in the under-the-stairs cupboard in our flat in Blackheath which was generally cool but in warm years could get in the low 20s. From there it moved to a basement cupboard in Kent which in the summer regularly got similarly hot. It then spent a year in the larder of our current house. In my defence the wine was never exposed to extreme cold or light but conditions were far from ideal. And yet the wine aged gracefully if perhaps a little quicker than it would have done in a proper cellar.

I noticed a similar thing in a case of Sagret de Gruaud Larose 2009 which followed me around for over ten years. Which leads me to ask, how necessary is proper wine storage? If you’re looking to resell or keeping wine for over ten years then you will probably want more reassurance. But even long term certain wines can thrive with less than perfect treatment. A bottle of Chateau de Sales 1964 Pomerol, bottled by Harveys of Bristol, somehow survived 52 years in first my grandfather’s house and then my father’s garage before emerging full of vigour and fruit.

If you live in a warm country or a modern flat then you probably should pay for storage or get one of those wine fridges. But if like many British people you live in a draughty Victorian house, there’s probably somewhere that is relatively cool and dark where you can keep a case of cru bourgeois claret or village Burgundy. Our current home has a larder that seems to stay remarkably cool though it wasn’t exactly tested in 2024, the only summer we have spent there.

Wine is more robust than you might think. There’s a lot of fun to be had buying old wines for not much money in the hope that you might get something wonderful. My father sometimes buys potluck cases from house clearances at the local auctioneer. He’d pay £50 or so with no idea what would be in it. There would be plenty of dross but some occasional gems like a 1975 Rioja from Berberana or a 1980 Chateau Septy Monbazillac. Sweet or fortified wines should be less delicate and I think the acidity makes riesling and indeed some English wines almost indestructible. I’d be less confident about white Burgundy, for example.

This week Richard Hemming who writes for Jancis Robinson posted on BlueSky (aka the other place) about a visit to a little shop in Sussex called Sheffield Park & Gardens in East Sussex which specialises in old wines (stored, I imagine, in less than perfect cellar conditions) where he picked up a bottle of 1970 Chateau d’Angludet for £25. His verdict: “Signs of life on the palate, but quite a bit of acetic acid too. Drinkable, and that's as much as I expected.” Still, it’s only a 1.5 hours drive from where I am in Kent. I have to admit I’m tempted.