How we keep wine
Storage and provenance.
Why wine that arrives at our shop in cold-chain condition costs more than wine that doesn’t — and stays drinkable for decades longer.
The wine in our cellar is the same wine you can buy in some grocery stores. The wine you receive from us is not. The difference is provenance: how the wine got from the producer’s cellar in France or Italy or Germany to our shelves in Boulder.
Why provenance matters.
Wine is a living product. Heat, light, vibration, and oxygen all damage it. A bottle of Burgundy that sat on a sun-warmed truck loading dock for three hours in August has been cooked. A bottle that spent two months in a non-refrigerated warehouse near a coastal port in summer is a different wine than the producer made.
Most damage to fine wine happens in the supply chain, not in the cellar. Once a bottle is roasted, no amount of careful storage afterward repairs it.
How our supply chain works.
Every bottle in the cellar arrives via temperature-controlled transport from the importer’s warehouse to our shop. Most of our Burgundy and Champagne comes through importers who store at 55°F (13°C) and ship in refrigerated trucks. We refuse summer shipments that aren’t cold-chain certified.
The shop itself is climate-controlled at 60-62°F year-round, with humidity managed between 60-70%. The cellar floor is below grade and stays cooler. Library bottles and the most fragile wines (older Champagne, library Burgundy, Riesling Auslese) live in the back cellar at lower temperatures.
What this costs.
Cold-chain shipping adds 8-15% to the cost of a bottle of fine wine. Climate control adds another 3-5% in operational cost. We absorb most of that into our margins; the rest shows up in the price difference between our shelves and a wine club that ships out of an unrefrigerated warehouse in summer.
For a bottle you’re going to drink tonight, the difference is small. For a bottle you intend to age — Burgundy you’ll open in 2035, Bordeaux for your child’s wedding — the difference is the bottle itself.
Storage for your collection.
If you have wine you want to age more than a few years, store it horizontally, in the dark, between 50 and 60°F, with humidity above 50%. Avoid temperature swings — fluctuating from 55° to 75° and back is more damaging than steady storage at 70°.
If you don’t have those conditions at home, we can store wine for you. Our cellar consulting service handles cellar building, valuation, and offsite storage for clients building a serious collection.