My pleasure. Thanks again for featuring my casts. The last thing I want is to end up in the middle of a Wine on the Dime family argument, but, hey, anything to keep the wine happy. Cheers!

It's not an argument now. It's just settled.

Thank you, that's very kind. Don't worry, I don't plan on charging for it. I'm just glad others are finding it useful. Cheers!

The Unknown Winecaster totally agree, great casts!

Thanks for the question, and let me preface it by saying that I don't have much expertise with the various wine fridges out there. I don't know what data are out there on the long term effectiveness of fridges in terms of maintaining proper humidity. I'll tell you what I do, which is very do it yourself, and maybe that'll have some value for you. My husband and I used to keep our cellar in a professional storage facility dedicated to wine storage but we couldn't continue to justify the cost (around $1500 per year), so we bought a stainless steel rack from Costco for about $80 dollars, fitted it with cardboard sides (made from the box it came in) to keep the bottles from rolling out and away we went. You can see a brief video of the set up in my Instagram feed. We keep it in a room on the bottom floor of our townhouse that gets minimal sun exposure (East facing, most morning sun blocked by the hill we live at the bottom of) and, since we live in Seattle, we rely on natural humidity to keep the corks moist. During the winter the temperature stays between 55 and 60 degrees and we anticipate it won't get much above 70 during the summer. None of that is "optimal" but it's saving us a bunch of money, and, as you can guess from the video, I'm not too stressed out about my wine not aging in an "optimal" environment" as long as it remains in a "reasonable" environment. Frankly, at this point, I'm more worried about an earthquake (knock wood) than I am about the wine not aging well. Hope that's in some way helpful. Cheers!

Thanks for the comment and question. I have heard about re-corking (or reconditioning) but not every 4-5 years -- more like every 30-50 years (thought possibly as little as say 15 years). It's not free of controversy as a practice and here's a link to an article that can say more about it. www.wineguy.co.nz/index.php/81-all-about-wine/849-recorking I hope that's helpful and thank you again for your message. Cheers!

As far as I know, alcohol doesn't diminish over time. It would be curious to see what would happen if what's actually going on in aging were better understood. Despite the loss of some of the "romance" of aging, it would probably be a good thing if consumers had a better idea of what the drink window of a wine really were. Here's to hoping for more research! Cheers!

Thank you Unknown Winecaster. Of anyone I've heard address the topic of aging, you are the most informative, and you are the Winecaster best equipped to explore and explain the chemistry of wine in general. I appreciate your approach. There seems to be much room for producers of quality wines to improve their product. On another cast I just heard Dominique Lafon from Burgundy explain that five years after bottling, all the bottles in a case of his wine are different from each other. This hardly optimal. Cheers

That's an interesting observation. The whole natural wine movement, by contrast, celebrates the uniqueness that you can find in each bottle when you use an extremely low-intervention approach to wine making. I actually get the charm that comes with that element of surprise, but, I also expect a certain amount of consistency so that I can enjoy the wine in an intentional way that makes the most of what I spend on it. Cheers!

Rolling the dice on a natural wine will always be better than a predictable bottle two buck upchuck or barefoot dungeon. My bias leans in favor of sulphur and screwcaps. Cheers

For long term storage 55° F should work for both whites and reds. Cheers!