My fiance and I are had dinner last night with a good friend, Tony, and his wife. Tony is a budding wine maker (when are you going to start mass producing?). He makes about 1,000 bottles a year of some amazing wine. As we ordered out bottle of vino at the table, he checked the cork for mold and that got us talking. We were talking about all the equipment he uses and how temperature effects wine making. Since temperature and moisture are items Tony must control in his wine cellar (where he makes his wine) I thought about how mold could affect wine since many of my friends store wine in their basement where basement mold can occur.
Well, any Frenchman(and Tony!) will tell you that the proper climate to store wine bottles is 55 degrees Fahrenheit and 70 to 95% relative humidity. This climate encourages chemical reactions to occur in the bottles that cause wine to age. Unfortunately, these are the same conditions that cause mold to grow in your wine cellar. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. So uncork a bottle, pour yourself a glass, and learn a few handy tips on how to preserve and age your wine without mold getting in the way.
Naturally, mold in wine cellars is a common concern among wine aficionados. And there are different practices, traditions, and beliefs about how to deal with mold. With wine bottles, mold is not as big a problem as some people think. Mold cannot penetrate a wine bottle but it can destroy the corks and labels. Mold around barrels is a different story.
Corks are organic and mold can damage them. You could use a different, non-organic, material than cork for your wine bottles, but then you wouldn’t be very traditional. Many wine makers are going this route though! As long as the corks are clean when they are first used, the part of the cork that touches the wine should never get moldy. But dry cellars can cause corks to dry out, contract and let air into the bottle. The air will oxidize the wine, turning it into vinegar in the long run, and possibly allow mold to enter the bottle.
The label is made of paper and is also susceptible to mold. It may seem like a minor loss, but the label largely determines how valuable the wine is. You can wrap the label in sealable polyethylene to protect it from mold degradation.
Some mold is actually encouraged in some wine cellars in Europe. Racodium cellare, the wine cellar mold, feeds off the alcohol that evaporates from wooden barrels of wine. At the same time, it keeps the air free of musty odors. Sadly, Racodium is increasingly rare nowadays.
Overall mold should be avoided in wine cellars, especially if you make your own wine and have wooden barrels. The trick is to keep the relative humidity precisely at 70%. This is low enough to keep most mold away, but high enough to properly age the wine. Additionally, you have to make sure that moisture is not entering the wine cellar from other sources. Wine cellars should be properly sealed, insulated and ventilated. Excess moisture can come from a leak in the vapor barrier or a water leak from a rusty pipe inside the wall. Also, try to keep unnecessary organic material out of the wine cellar.
If you do have mold and decide to get rid of it, then there is one extremely important thing to know. Do not, DO NOT, use chlorine bleach to clean the mold. While mold cannot enter corked bottles, chlorine ions can penetrate bottles and barrels to destroy your wine. Millions of dollars of wine were lost in California when wineries tried to remove mold by scrubbing their walls with bleach. If you use any other chemicals, check to make sure it will also not damage your wine.
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