The Wine Collector

Self-service wine storage facilities are the norm in the U.S. Since they are all likely to have appropriate temperature controls and security precautions, which factors differentiate one from another?

1. Price – See my recent post, “The economics of off-site wine storage”, to understand why this isn’t as simple as it may seem.
2. Proximity to your home – Remember, you will have to drive to and from the facility to drop off or pick up wine. Depending on how you value your time, this may be the single most important factor.
3. Hours of access – Is the facility open weekends, evenings, or 24 hours using an access code?
4. Staff to help load/unload – Is there someone to help you transfer wine from your car to your locker, locate cases in your locker, and bring them to your car?
5. Receiving of packages – Can you have wine sent directly to your facility? Are there fees for this service?
6. Extras – Back-up power generators may be important in hot weather climates. Some facilities have an events room for socializing with other customers.

Full-service wine storage

Your alternative to self-service wine storage is full-service storage. There are fewer providers and you may not have one in your area (although you can use such services remotely in conjunction with Fedex). For full service wine storage facilities, here are differentiators to consider:

1. Price – Pricing is almost always “per case, per month” so it’s easy to understand. However, there may be fees for additions and/or removals so make sure to ask.
2. Inventorying – Wine should be inventoried upon arrival and tracked in some way that you can access remotely, ideally via a web-based software program.
3. Barcoding – Bottles should be individually barcoded when inventoried to ensure they aren’t accidentally mixed up with someone else’s wine.
4. Initiating transfers – How easy is to set up a transfer in or out? How much advance notice is needed?
5. Arrivals notifications – Are you notified by email automatically whenever wine is received and added to your account?
6. Pick-up and delivery – Local pick-up and delivery services should be offered (check pricing) as well as the ability to drop off or pick up wine in person at the facility.
7. Shipping services – Will they ship wine using Fedex/UPS or coordinate transfers with freight forwarders?
8. Extras – Will they pack up wine at your home for transfer to their facility? Will they inventory your wine stored elsewhere (e.g. home) too?

Note: Vinfolio offers full-service wine storage. Click here to learn more.

Self-service facilities are basically specialized real estate plays as the customer is renting “space.” The pricing methodology is usually expressed as a monthly rate for a locker of a given case capacity. For example, $40 per month for a 40-case locker. Mentally, you quickly calculate $1.00/case per month and it’s this $1.00/case that you remember. However, often your particular 40 cases won’t fit. Maybe you can only fit 32 because you have a mixed group of cases of different sizes (like most of us) and the “estimate” was based on a standard size (usually the smallest). This means your $1.00/case is now $1.25/case ($40/32).

What about the effective cost per case before your locker reaches its capacity. For example, even if you start with 15 cases, you are still paying $40 a month! This equates to $2.67/case per month ($40/15). You get the point.

The alternative is to use full-service storage which is almost always charged for by the case, whether you have 1, 15, 40, or 500. In short, you only pay for what you use.

Applying the above thinking is fundamental to making an educated comparison between using self-service or full-service wine storage as it normalizes the differences in pricing models. You can then decide which option appeals to you and what the real additional cost of the full service approach (if any) might be.

Note: Vinfolio offers full service wine storage. Click here to learn more.

Alexander J. Pandell, Ph.D. authored the most scientific analysis on this topic that I’ve found titled “How temperature affects the aging of wine.” You can find it along with some other material on his site called The Alchemist’s Wine Perspective. The article is worth reading in full but I will try to distill the key conclusions which are:

1. Higher temperatures accelerate the aging process dramatically (e.g., storing wine at 59 degrees ages it 50% faster than 55 degrees)
2. Faster aging increases the rate of undesirable chemical reactions which can produce “compounds with foul odors and off tastes.”