Wine storage cabinets - humidity control.

[Steve_K]

I'm in the market for a wine cabinet, and I am in the lucky position of being able to buy wholesale.
The company I deal with carries most of the Liebherr range - and I'm looking at the WK2926 (119 bottle) and WK4126 (168 bottle).

Some of the top end models have humidity control - how much difference does this make to the long term ageing of wine?
I understand that humidity would stop the cork drying out, but surely having the bottles on their sides would keep the business end nicely soaked anyway...

I plan to keep bottles for between 2 and 25 years, based on what I have collected so far.

[Steve_K]

Hmm.... I have done some searching about and it appears that the relative humidity for where I live is usually between 70 and 90 throughout the year.

So maybe I need to consider slight de-humidification! Silica gel here we go.

Thanks folks, I'll order first thing in the morning :-D

[SteveG]

Depends on where you live. Here in SF, our "cellar" is pretty stable at 60 RH, even though it's just a well-insulated closet on the 2nd floor of a 3 floor building. Recommended RH is 50-80 so we could stand to bring it up a bit but it isn't a huge deal.

If you live in a very dry high altitude environment, then it's an issue. If not, humidity variations within the acceptable range are much less damaging, if they're damaging at all, to a wine than temperature variations which cause expansion and contraction.

[SteveTimko]

I live in Reno and it doesn't get much drier than this. I know a couple who have been storing bottles without humidity control for 15 years and they haven't had problems yet.
That said, I think it's a better idea to have humidity. The good news is that a damp sponge on a plate will do pretty close to humidity control.