09/14/2015

Top Wine Styles to Cellar

A personal cellar can be littered with vinous mistakes, your palate changes over time, winemakers move on and styles fall in and out of popularity. When starting a cellar ask yourself a few questions:

  1. Do I like aged wine?
  2. How much wine do I want to collect?
  3. Do I need wine racks or a wine cabinet?

Once these questions are answered and you are about to start a cellar, I urge all of our members to first buy some aged wines, whether Pinot Noir or Shiraz, choose some varieties you enjoy and taste them.  You could save yourself a lot of time, money and possibly some embarrassing moments. While there are many, many different wine varieties that are cultivated worldwide, the below list of wines styles to cellar is based on years of managing private cellars at Vinified. Typically you don’t need wine cabinets or wine coolers you need wines with a good balance of fruit, acids, tannins and length to be able to age.

Here are our top 5;

Types of White Wine;

  1. Riesling: German, Eden Valley, Clare Valley and also the emerging region of the Great Southern in Western Australia should not be forgotten.
  2. Chardonnay: White Burgundy/ Chablis, Adelaide Hills, Yarra Valley or Margaret River

Types of Red Wine;

  1. Pinot Noir: Grand Cru Burgundies of France, Tasmania, Yarra Valley and Martinborough, NZ
  2. Sangiovese: Chianti or Chianti Classico, McLaren Vale, Brunello di Montalcino
  3. Syrah/ Shiraz: Cote Rotie of the Rhone, the Hunter Valley, Heathcote and of course the Barossa Valley, there are so many styles to choose from.

A little extra… 3 top tips for your home cellar;

  1. At home leave wines in boxes or original packaging. Some insulation is better the no insulation.
  2. Don’t worry about humidity so much, Melbourne’s RH (relative humidity) averages 65% which is near enough to perfect. In most domestic circumstances the humidity argument becomes mute.
  3. Whether you enjoy Pinot Noir now or not, start putting it in your cellar now. Your palate will change. 9/10 Vinified Members wish they had started cellaring Pinot Noir earlier.

Note: In general, more expensive wines are made to become better with age. They are some times made with better fruit and more complex styles of oak. Most inexpensive wines do not benefit from ageing.