Managed Wine Storage

Where your wine is stored today will most definitely decide its future, both from a drinking and investment perspective. Batchelar Fine and Rare Wine offer a managed cellar service. For as little as $2 per bottle per year you can rest assured that your precious wines will mature in the secure, pristine conditions in an underground cellars or state of the art purpose-built storage facilities.

Managed Storage.jpg Wine is sensitive to storage conditions and is one of a few consumable products that can improve with age as long as it is carefully nurtured and protected. Some wines not only become more interesting with age but actually require ageing to ensure a pleasant drinking experience!

If conditions are anything less than perfect, your precious investment could well be ruined. An incredible amount of passion and careful consideration goes into selecting and investing in wine. Unfortunately, not as much thought is often given to its storage. Correct storage for a fine wine is one of the most difficult things to find, simply because the optimum conditions required to protect and mature wine to perfection are exceptionally difficult to produce and maintain.

If you are anything like us, we find it hard not to drink our wines if they are sitting there in the rack! If close at hand it is far too easy to dip into those reserves well before your wines have matured and evolved. Another great benefit of managed storage is the “out of sight, out of mind” element whereby your wines have a chance to reach their peak before you or your friends and family raid the cellar.

Contact us today to discuss your storage requirements. Depending on your circumstances we offer managed cellar storage across the globe utilising a network of directly owned and managed facilities as well as the most reputable, tried and trusted partners in the global industry. We can take on and manage your Bordeaux en primer on the Quay as well as looking after that Hill of Grace in Melbourne.

Optimum Storage Conditions

When it comes to storing your precious wines, as an investment or to drink, when they are laid down to mature there are a number of very important things for you to consider:

Humidity - Wine should be stored only where the humidity level can be constantly maintained above 70%, and below 80%.

Temperature & Air Quality - It is important to store wine at 13-14 degrees Celsius and to keep that temperature constant for the entire period of its storage. The store should also be well ventilated.

Light & Vibration - Your wine should be cellared away from light, and where it can be free from vibrations.

Security & Integrity - Your wine must be physically and financially secure. In case of loss, your investment must be appropriately covered.

We manage our own facilities and where appropriate, partner with the best managed service providers around the world.

Batchelar Fine and Rare wine utilise a number of in-house and managed service options depending on the location of our clients, their wine portfolio and their cellaring requirements.

For example, we recommend purchasing and cellaring investment grade wines as close to the source and markets as possible (Paris, London and New York) and therefore use the best service providers in France, Italy, the UK and US. If however, your wine portfolio is for near term drinking it makes sense to have it close at hand and we have our own facilities (a combination of natural underground and purpose-built above ground units) in New Zealand, with facilities in the pipeline for Sydney.

We also partner with cellar providers in other Australian cities, Singapore, Hong Kong, Chicago and San Francisco to ensure we service the secondary investment centres.

Cellar Certificate

If you have taken the trouble to provide pristine storage for your wine, you should be able to prove it to the secondary market. Batchelar Fine and Rare Wine’s Cellar Certificate authenticates that your wine has been laid down in the correct storage conditions essential for its optimal maturation.

The Cellar Certificate gives you the reassurance that, whilst in our (or our rigorously selected partner’s) care, your wine will not have been tampered with or damaged in any way. A unique certificate is allocated to every consignment of wine leaving our cellars. With our Cellar Certificate, you will have invaluable proof that your fine wine has been matured in the perfect storage environment.

Insurance

Our insurance cover varies depending on storage location and whether we are utilising one of our own or a partner's facility. We will discuss bespoke insurance cover on request.

Cellar Charges

These charges apply to managed storage in one of our Australian cellar facilities*. Cellarage charges are reviewed annually and are currently set at the following level:

Cases in portfolio	Annual Rate Per Case (ex. GST)
1 – 10 Cases	$32.00
10 – 50 Cases	$29.50
50 - 100	$27.00
> 100 Cases	$25.50

*Rates for international storage vary and will be quoted on request.

Quarterly invoicing is straightforward and transparent. At the end of each calendar quarter, invoices will be raised for cellarage covering only wines in cellar during the preceding three months. Where new wines have been added to the cellar, cellarage will be charged from the month of receipt. Likewise, where wines have been withdrawn, cellarage will be waived from the month the wine leaves the cellar.

Rates will be calculated per case per month, the monthly rate being one twelth of the annual rate. The rate applicable to your wine cellar will be based on the number of cases in the cellar at the end of the preceding quarter.

There are two payment options, either via Direct Debit from a bank account or via a Credit/Debit Card mandate. Once your mandate is completed and processed, there is nothing for you to do to settle your cellarage account.

Optimum Storage Conditions

Humidity

Of all the conditions essential for optimum storage of your fine wine, humidity is one of the most important.

Proper humidity is essential in keeping the wine’s cork moist, preventing the wine from evaporating to a damaging degree whilst in storage. However, corks do not completely seal a bottle of wine, so almost all bottles laid down for extended periods lose some of their contents due to evaporation. If the air is too dry, evaporation speeds up, reducing the level of your wine and increasing the ullage, or the gap between the bottom of the cork and the wine. When ullage increases significantly, it automatically decreases the value of your wine.

Over time in less than perfect wine storage conditions, low humidity can also cause the cork to dry up to such an extent that it loses its elasticity and lets air into the bottle - ruining wine through oxidation.

The ideal humidity level for wine storage is 70 to 80%. When stored in optimum conditions, fine wine can be laid down for 10 to 30 years and, according to wine experts, even as long as 50 years.

Excessive humidity in storage can also cause a bottle’s labels and packaging to discolour and deteriorate. This affects the presentation of the wine and, in today’s market, would definitely decrease its investment value.

Temperature and Air Quality

A temperature of between 13 and14 degrees Celsius is ideal for a wine's maturation, but only if it remains constant.

Fluctuations in temperature during storage can cause expansion and contraction of the wine, which will damage the integrity of the cork and allow air in. Once your wine comes into contact with air, the irreversible process of oxidation will begin to impact and degrade your wine.

Temperatures higher than 13 to 14 degrees Celsius will increase the chemical reactions inside a bottle. Even short periods of time spent at the incorrect temperature can leave a wine’s fruit component hollow or flat, giving it an unpleasant aftertaste. Wine stored at home cannot escape these fluctuations.

Studies show that wine, even when stored at a steady room or ambient temperature, will mature eight times faster than it would in the correct temperature.

Temperature damaged wine invariably loses its colour, aroma, flavour and, subsequently, its value.

Light and Vibration

Wine likes to age away from light, and in complete stillness.

Light ages wine prematurely. It is the reason coloured glass has been used to bottle fine wines for centuries. However, ultraviolet light can penetrate even the darkest of glass, causing degradation of the organic compounds, especially the tannins, found in wine. These organic compounds contribute to the aroma, flavour and structure of the wine - without them your wine would be flat and thin. Exposure to ultraviolet light results in unfavourable and irreversible changes in your wine.

Vibration agitates the bottle, disturbing the sediments in the wine. This, once again, speeds up its chemical reactions and breaks down the molecular structure of its compounds, thus ageing the wine too quickly. So, ideally, once a wine is laid down in a dark, still storage environment, it should not be disturbed until it is ready to be opened or sold.

Security and Integrity

No one should store fine wine without considering its safety. In a market where insolvency and fraud is not uncommon, you need to look into every detail of your chosen storage facility and its environment, to ensure that your wine is absolutely safe.

A key element to make sure of is the physical security of your wine, and of the storage where it lies. Like any other high-value asset, fine wine needs to be stored under tight security, where it can be completely safe from tampering or theft. Another very important element is the financial security of your wine. If you have chosen professional storage, it is imperative that the facility is financially secure, with unquestioned integrity.

Your investment should be properly insured, and you need to go through your insurance policy with extra care, so that you understand exactly what is covered. Typically, household policies do not cover fine wines.