We recently had a little storm here in South Florida that resulted in a loss
of power. Wine was stored in a wine cellar powered by electricity. The
Cellar was kept at 55-57 degrees Fahrenheit and was without power for three
days. The outside temperature was about 80 degrees. The cellar was not
opened during that period of time. I believe that no or very little damage
was done to the wine there was about a 15 degree rise in temperature during
that time. What is the opinion of the group?

sibeer wrote:
We recently had a little storm here in South Florida that resulted in a loss
of power. Wine was stored in a wine cellar powered by electricity. The
Cellar was kept at 55-57 degrees Fahrenheit and was without power for three
days. The outside temperature was about 80 degrees. The cellar was not
opened during that period of time. I believe that no or very little damage
was done to the wine there was about a 15 degree rise in temperature during
that time. What is the opinion of the group?

If the temperature slowly increased from about 55 to 70 degrees F over
3 days, I doubt if there was any damage to your wine at all. Exceptions
might be extremely old wines and ones with corks that are beginning to
fail. It is very likely that your wine saw temperatures of 70 degrees
and likely much higher before you cellared it, unless you bought it
directly from the wine maker who had a cool cellar and if you put the
wine in your cellar without delay.

I keep a portable generator and have enough gasoline on hand to cool my
wine room, run the refrigerator and freezer, and run a few lights in
case of extended outage. I have had to use it twice. Such generators
are not extremely expensive and cost far lest than the damage to wines
and food might be for just one extended outage.Just be sure you have
enough heavy duty electrical cables on hand to reach everything you
need to operate in case of outage. If money is no object, a natural gas
or propane generator can be bought that automatically starts and
switches your electrical box to run essential things in an emergency.
Hospitals and other critical services have to have such generators. But
as one might guess, the generator and labor to install it is very
expensive.

"sibeer" wrote in
:

We recently had a little storm here in South Florida that resulted in
a loss of power. Wine was stored in a wine cellar powered by
electricity. The Cellar was kept at 55-57 degrees Fahrenheit and was
without power for three days. The outside temperature was about 80
degrees. The cellar was not opened during that period of time. I
believe that no or very little damage was done to the wine there was
about a 15 degree rise in temperature during that time. What is the
opinion of the group?



Best way to tell is to take a representative and drink it. Of course what
can you tell from one bottle? You could invite the florida contingent over
and we could random test several bottles, some of us can bring steaks
others fish for appropriate food pairings. Alwys happy to be of asistance
to a neighbor!

--
Joseph Coulter
Cruises and Vacations
http://www.josephcoulter.com/

"jcoulter" wrote in message
.. .
"sibeer" wrote in
:


Best way to tell is to take a representative and drink it. Of course what
can you tell from one bottle? You could invite the florida contingent over
and we could random test several bottles, some of us can bring steaks
others fish for appropriate food pairings. Alwys happy to be of asistance
to a neighbor!

A better way would be to mail some to us all; we are a community-minded
bunch and would be glad to test it for you...

Anyway, good that you survived relatively intact.