Wine Storage Basics- Vibration
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Watching The Vibration Levels In A Wine Cellar
If you are able to satisfy the demands of the first four conditions for cellaring wines, you are doing very well indeed. The last two are of lower consequence, but are worth considering for the best results. The first of these is the avoidance of disruption to the wines, both in the form of movement of the bottles and of vibration.
Guigal is the most important producer in the famous Côte-Rôtie region of France’s Rhone Valley. Outgrowing its 300-year-old cellars in Ampuis, it recently embarked on an enormous construction project. The result is almost two hectares of cellar caverns, climate controlled to 13oC and 80% relative humidity. This proved to be something of an engineering nightmare, with the facility sandwiched between the mighty Rhone river and a train line on one side, and a main road on the other. The finished product not only supports the road, but also Guigal’s production facility, with a mass of some five tonnes per square metre!
Traffic rumbling across the top of the cellar is detrimental to the wine. Understanding this requires a little insight into the way in which wine develops. Put simply, the chemical processes in the wine produce larger and more complex molecules that eventually fall out of the solution as sediment. Under stable conditions, these are able to settle along the bottom of the bottle or barrel, allowing the wine to develop fully. Movement disrupts this process, stirring the sediment and mixing it throughout the wine.
The solution at Guigal was to construct an advanced anti-vibration system throughout the entire cellar structure. While most of us do not have the problem of trucks rumbling over our wine collection at home, vibration can still pose a threat. Mechanical cooling units are prime culprits.
Further to this problem, there are extreme phenomena such as ‘travel shock’, which the wine can experience after extended transportation. It may take weeks or even months to settle before it is again at its best. Closely related is ‘bottle shock’, where the wine takes some time to recover from the bottling process.