How Climate Disasters Are Recalibrating Wine Collecting

When Paul Ricci’s family renovated their New Jersey home, he installed a wine cellar for the bottles he’s been collecting since the late 1990s. “It’s an obsession,” he says, laughing.

The threat of floods and other weather events “crosses my mind,” says Ricci, a partner in the advisory group of a large public accounting firm. “You want to think about insuring your investment. Is it protected from floods, is it protected from fires and do you need insurance riders for that?”

It’s an apt concern in and beyond Ricci’s basement. As global temperatures warm, and the frequency and severity of extreme weather events grow, devoted collectors are recalibrating their approaches to buying and storing their prized bottles. Some purchase back-up generators and insurance policies, and debate the benefits of offsite storage facilities. Others ask existential questions about which regions to invest in and when.

This is all part of the expansive impact of climate change on wine. Fridges and cellars may be climate-controlled, but the planet they occupy most certainly is not. 

Keeping a Closer Eye on Inventory

Climate disasters inspire many collectors to keep extremely up-to-date inventories in spreadsheets and password-protected documents so they’re sure that everything in their homes or remote storage facilities is covered. 

“Store it in the cloud, don’t write it on a piece of paper you keep in your cellar,” says Chris Klingenstein, a private wine consultant based in Chicago. 

Peter Molidari, the chief revenue officer of Uovo Wine, a wine collection and storage company,  advises updating inventories every four to six months. 

“Knowing what you have, and what the value of that collection is as the secondary market shifts, is critically important,” he says. Otherwise, “if you do come across a scenario of flooding where the labels come off, you don’t know what you have. Even if you know that you had some really good stuff, the insurance [provider] can no longer match it all up.”

Assessing Local Risks

Climate concerns vary regionally, too. Flooding, hurricanes and winds threaten collectors in Florida and the southeastern United States more than those in, say, the Southwest, where extreme heat is a concern. 

Many along the Eastern Seaboard are reevaluating their basement storage. They’re either relocating it to a cool first floor or redesigning the subterranean space with custom drainage—or simply repositioning their bottles. 

“Try keeping your bottles a little raised, even six inches off the ground will ultimately save a lot of collections,” Molinari suggests.