Wines for Cellaring in Adelaide: What Ages Well and How to Keep It

Adelaide Food & Wine

Most wine is made to be opened within a year or two. A small share gets better with time. This guide to wines for cellaring in Adelaide covers how to tell the difference, which bottles earn a place, and how to store them.

Choosing wines for cellaring in Adelaide

Collectors here start with an advantage. Several of the country’s most collected wines are made within two hours of the CBD. The skill is knowing which ones, and how long to hold them.

Three things let a wine improve in bottle: tannin, acidity and concentrated fruit. A wine needs at least two of the three. Without them it fades rather than develops.

Tannin

Tannin comes from grape skins, seeds and oak. It gives young red wine its grip and softens over time. Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz from good sites carry plenty of it.

Acidity

Acid keeps a wine fresh while other flavours develop. It is the reason a dry white with almost no tannin, such as Riesling, can age for many years.

Concentration

A thin wine has nothing to grow into. Dense fruit gives time something to work on.

What not to cellar

Most rosé, most aromatic whites and the everyday reds on a bottle shop floor are made to drink young. Keeping them does not improve them. If a wine is sold as fresh and fruity, drink it that way.

South Australian wines worth holding

Clare and Eden Valley Riesling

Tyson Stelzer describes Eden Valley Riesling as ageing reliably to notes of toast, honey and butter. He says the best Clare Valley examples develop waxy, toasty and honeyed flavours. He points to the restrained, austere structure of both as the reason they last. Young, they are tight and citrus-driven. Given time, they fill out and soften.

Barossa and Eden Valley Shiraz

The Langtons Classification ranks Australia’s most sought-after wines on their performance at auction. A wine needs a track record of at least ten released vintages, and the current edition lists 100 wines from 60 wineries. Its top tier, 1st Classified, includes Penfolds Grange, Henschke Hill of Grace and Rockford Basket Press, all South Australian Shiraz.

Coonawarra Cabernet

Wynns Coonawarra Estate John Riddoch sits in the same top tier. We cover the region in our guide to Coonawarra Cabernet.

The French classics

Bordeaux, Northern Rhône Syrah, grand cru Burgundy and Sauternes remain the benchmarks for long ageing, along with Barolo from Italy. Our French wine guide covers the main regions.

How long to cellar wine

There is no single answer. Start with the producer’s drinking window. Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars advises checking with the winemaker before committing a bottle to long storage.

With a case, open one bottle every few years. If it tastes better than the last one, keep waiting. If it starts to dry out, drink the rest.

Keep a record

Write down what you bought, when and where it sits. Note each bottle you open and how it tasted. After a few years the notes tell you more about your cellar than any vintage chart.

Buy in depth

Six bottles of one wine teach you more than six different wines. You see the same wine change, which is the point of cellaring.

Cellar conditions that matter

Stag’s Leap puts the ideal cellar temperature at 13 to 16°C. Consistency matters more than precision: a steady 17 or 18°C is safer than a room that swings.

Aim for humidity around 70 per cent, within a range of 50 to 80 per cent, so corks stay moist. Keep bottles dark and still. Light and vibration both work against a wine. Stag’s Leap also warns that glass-door wine fridges can let in more light than you would expect.

Adelaide summers are the main risk. A garage or a cupboard on an outside wall will see heat spikes. If you are planning a dedicated space, read our guide to building an Adelaide wine cellar.

To see how many bottles your own space will hold, our wine cellar calculator takes the room size and the racking on each wall and gives a bottle count, a floor plan and the cooling it needs.

Ask the people who make it

Producers know how their wines age better than anyone. Our next masterclasses are Hoffmann Family Vineyards on Thursday 15 October and Langmeil on Thursday 12 November, both $55.