How to store fine Burgundy – a cellaring guide

Like pretty much all fine wine, good Burgundy – whether red or white – repays cellaring. But in an era when very few of us have actual cellars, and wines seem to be drunk younger and younger, the finer details as to where and how to store your best Burgundy bear further scrutiny. Are there particular characteristics to Burgundy that require special cellaring conditions? Which Burgundy wines most benefit from ageing? Does white Burgundy need to be aged differently to red? And how will the best Burgundies evolve in style as a result of ageing?

It was with the 1990 vintage that Justerini & Brooks’ then head buyer Hew Blair pioneered Burgundy En Primeur tastings in London. J&B was the first British merchant to bring over and present barrel samples of Burgundy to private customers, who could then purchase the newly released wines at the best price, before ageing them until they reached maturity. The practice has evolved to incorporate an expansive tasting each January, when the latest vintage of the most prized gems of J&B’s extensive Burgundy range are first tasted. And nearly all such wines are made to be enjoyed a few years’ – in some cases decades’ – hence.

Before one even begins to consider the details of how to store Burgundy wines, though, the first question that needs to be addressed is why. After all, the likes of Domaine de Montille’s Bourgogne – whether Blanc or Rouge – are simply delicious from the moment they’re put into bottle. And while they can be kept for a few years, such ‘generic’ Burgundy wines (which is to say wines blended from sites across the region, rather than a specific vineyard) are best enjoyed in the first flush of their youth, a time when their bright fruit is at its pristine best.

Step up a notch into wines from named villages, such as Domaine Hubert Lignier’s Gevrey-Chambertin or Bachelet-Monnot’s Chassagne-Montrachet, however, and you’re dealing with an altogether different beast. Village-level wines are, typically, medium-term wines. You can decant youthful reds or whites of this type an hour or so before drinking to allow them to unfurl like a flower. Alternatively, age them for up to a decade or so in order to allow the tannins of the reds to soften and integrate into the wine, and for both reds and whites to develop additional layers of flavour. (Decanting is also advisable for truly venerable aged wines, albeit for a different reason. In this case, you want to decant all but the last half-glass or so from the bottle, as this prevents any sediment from being poured. Burgundy is less susceptible to this harmless deposit than some more burly, tannic wines, though, so it’s equally important not to decant really old, fragile Burgundies too early, as exposure to air will see them lose that ethereal delicacy and hasten their demise.)

While village-level wines generally benefit from a bit of ageing, cellaring is an absolute necessity for the more concentrated and structured premier- and grand-cru wines. Typically, these are wines that producers like Jean-Noel Gagnard or Joseph Drouhin ‘design’ with long-term ageing in mind. They tend to boast more of everything – more concentration, more tannin, more oak – than village wines, and so it takes a bit of time for all these elements to settle together harmoniously, and for the wines to become the seamless, layered masterpieces they were always meant to be.

Depending on the vintage, these wines are built for the long haul. For the best of them – particularly the top reds – a decade is merely the blink of an eye.Such ageing will see the wines take on more nuanced, complex characteristics – the great reds of Clos Vougeot or Bonnes-Mares will develop wonderful savoury, earthy, truffley notes that are hard to find in the Pinot Noirs of other parts of the world. Meanwhile the great whites of Montrachet or Meursault gain beguiling richness and roundness that move from the brisk, citrus fruits of youth towards honeyed, nutty tones that offer a more complete picture. A ten- or twenty-year-old Chablis Grand Cru Les Preuses offers such a beguiling melange of flavours as to be a completely different animal to a young, fresh Petit Chablis.

As a rough rule of thumb, the whites require less ageing then reds. Unlike red Burgundy, white Burgundy has no tannins that need to soften and integrate into its body, so will typically be ready to drink a bit younger. Bear in mind also that whites are unlikely to age for quite as long as reds. 

In fact, there was a time around the turn of the century when ageing white Burgundy came with a degree of risk, as many producers were having problems with the premature oxidation of their wines. Without getting bogged down in too many technical details, this meant that the wines were ageing much faster than they were expected to. Luckily, whether because of higher-quality corks or more diligence in Burgundian cellars, it seems that the crisis point has passed, and the best wines from more recent vintages should hold up better in the medium to long term. Even so, there is generally a limit to the age most white Burgundies can get to before the evolution of their bright, primary fruit into a rounder, nuttier character risks showing signs of fatigue.

From a practical perspective, the requirements for storing white Burgundy are no different to those that apply to reds – or, indeed, fine wine from other regions. It goes without saying that no serious Burgundy should be aged in a rack in the kitchen. High temperatures speed up chemical reactions in the wines, making them age faster than they otherwise would. Warm temperatures can also ‘cook’ the fruit, a catastrophe for anyone wanting to enjoy their Burgundies at their delicate best. Even worse, in many ways, is cellaring your wines in a part of the house that sees extreme temperature swings from one season to the next. Dramatic variations in temperature not only have an adverse effect on wine chemistry, they can also cause the wine in the neck of the bottle to expand as it warms and contract as it cools. The alternating pressurisation and depressurisation in the bottle’s headspace eventually allows oxygen – the enemy of all maturing wines – access to the precious liquid, with the inevitable damaging consequences.

In an ideal world, the space in which you store your wines should also be dimly lit. Too much light entering a bottle can cause ‘light strike’, which again alters the chemistry of your wine, and not to its advantage. Store your wines away from sources of vibration, regardless of whether the shaking comes from a washing machine on spin cycle or a nearby main road. The kinetic energy from the vibrations can alter the rate of sedimentation in the bottle, and can even cause the wines to lose some of the acids that help protect it against oxidation. Humidity levels also need to be monitored – too little and the cork that protects your wine will shrink, with the predictable result of allowing oxygen ingress.

Given all these parameters, what are the best options for anyone wanting to store their Burgundy purchases at home? The ideal solution, of course, comes in the form of a basement cellar that allows you to approximate the conditions in which the wine would be cellared in a winery. Year-round temperatures of 12-15°C allow wines to evolve gradually, and humidity levels of 60-85% will help to keep your corks nice and snug. There are alternatives to cellars and basements, of course, which is handy for those who live in flats or contemporary houses. Some wine collectors choose to install a spiral cellar underground, which helps with temperature control and darkness, although is not always as effective at maintaining optimal humidity levels. Alternatively, you could invest in specialist wine fridges, designed to keep your bottles at the temperature of your choice, while minimising vibrations and maximising humidity. Or you could go the whole hog and commission a specialist firm to build you a wine room that allows you to control all the key parameters.

If it all sounds like too much of a commitment, the easiest – and most reliable – solution comes in the form of professional wine storage. Ageing your Burgundy in private wine storage places all the above concerns into the hands of professionals, allowing you to handle the wine only when you’re ready to pop that cork. Established in 1972, Cellarers (Wines) Limited is Justerini & Brook’s dedicated storing subsidiary, storing more than £450million of customer reserves at optimal conditions through our cellaring partner Octavian. The service comes with the added benefit of guaranteed provenance, insurance and management of your collection. Wines bought en primeur, for instance, come direct from the domaine, while each wine is carefully labelled with the customer’s name, account number and a unique identifying number. Such a solution also allows, should you choose, access to and the management of brokerage of your wines at a future date.

The facility also makes it easier to keep track of all your various Gevrey-Chambertins and Chambolle-Musignys via a personal account summary of your holdings. When it comes to monitoring and maintaining your collection, however, there’s still a lot to be said for creating your own separate spreadsheet that itemises your Burgundian portfolio (name of producer, cuvée, appellation, vintage, etc) and the number of bottles of each, with bottles added as they are purchased, and taken out as they are consumed. (There are also many online cellar management tools available, which will do much of the heavy lifting for you.) That way, you have a central reference point for all your wines, allowing for a comprehensive perspective when tackling the best part – making decisions about when to drink your wines.

As above, there are various accepted norms as to when to broach whites rather than reds, village wines or grands crus, but nothing beats practical experience. As long as you have a case of a particular cuvée – rather than a single bottle – the best advice is to open your first bottle a year or two before you think the wines are going to hit their peak. This allows you to make a judgement, based on the way your wine is evolving as well as your own personal tastes, about when you should wake the next bottle from its slumbers. From there, it should be plain – and pleasurable – sailing…