Storing wine under the house ?

September 5, 2007 9:15 PM

So here's the deal, we have an inordinate amount of wine (for us) we need to store and keep out of the recent and likely continuing heat for the next 3 weeks, on the order of 8 cases or so.

How feasible is it to wrap up the cased wine in some heavy duty garbage bags and store it under the house? We have a raised foundation with a good 2-3 foot of clearance down there?

We only need to keep it down there for 2-3 weeks until it will be consumed, we'd like to avoid transporting it anywhere for "proper storage". Petitioning for the hive minds thoughts, thanks!

posted by iamabot to food & drink (10 comments total)

The temperature down there shouldn't fluctuate much at all, especially over a short period like 3 weeks. Check what temperature it is, and if it's acceptable then I'd say go for it.
posted by robcorr at 10:00 PM on September 5, 2007

Wine stores perfectly nicely in my Minnesota basement--not so much in my non-air-conditioned upstairs.
posted by gimonca at 10:12 PM on September 5, 2007

Our wine does fine in our basement. We're in Redwood City, where it gets randomly hot on occasion.
posted by padraigin at 10:28 PM on September 5, 2007

Thanks for the comments, I'll give it a shot tomorrow morning.
posted by iamabot at 10:53 PM on September 5, 2007

K&L down on 4th might have or know or storage. It'd likely be for long-term use by customers with large collections, but I'd think they could help with short term too.

Sounds like quite an event!
posted by kcm at 11:08 PM on September 5, 2007

We hope so, assuming I can finish The Plan and hand it off to family next week I can stop worrying about this stuff. But spoiled wine would be a bummer after all this work.

Thank god I don't have to worry about the beer...yet.
posted by iamabot at 12:43 AM on September 6, 2007

as long as the beer has not already been refrigerated and does not contain live yeast it should be alright at pretty much any temperature.
posted by phil at 5:17 AM on September 6, 2007

You could hang a max/min thermometer down there for a couple of days before stashing the wine, to be sure there are no crazy air temp fluctuations.
posted by roofus at 6:52 AM on September 6, 2007

It looks like you're in or near wine country. Are there any commercial wine cellars/storage places near you. (Such as this one in Chicago.) This would cost you some, but the wine would be properly stored.

Here's what I found in your area.
posted by nax at 4:56 PM on September 6, 2007

Thanks Nax, I looked around it's just more of a hassle than it;'s worth to source short term storage. Worse comes to worse there are plenty of persons with basements and serious wine cellars we can infringe upon for the storage, but at this point we're storing under the house for the short period of time.
posted by iamabot at 10:29 PM on September 6, 2007