Basic Wine Storage Tips You Need to Know
When it comes to savoring and appreciating the great pleasure of wine tasting, there is nothing more enjoyable than slowly building up a collection of great wines that suit your taste. Learning the basic wine storage tips is essential to keeping your collection tasting great.
Choosing and buying your wine collection is only part of the process of becoming proficient in the world of quality wines. Stored wines can be preserved for decades, even centuries. As they age, they become rarer and more valuable. However, poorly stored wine can spoil, no matter how good the wine was when it was put into storage.
It is important to know wine storage basics! With that in mind, here are some tips for properly protecting your wines so that you or your descendants can enjoy them in the future.
1. Store wine at the ideal temperature.
Without a shadow of a doubt, the most critical factor in preserving the quality of your wine collection is to ensure you store it at the appropriate temperature. Whether it is for short, or long-term storage, a temperature of around 12ºC / 55ºF is considered the correct temperature to prolong the life of your wines. Although there can be some variance, depending on the wine, this is an excellent all-around temperature for your collection.
2. Keep the temperature stable.
If your wines are stored in an area where the temperature can vary frequently, your wine may spoil. Temperatures below -3ºC / 27ºF should be avoided, as this can cause freezing within the bottle, and temperatures above 20ºC / 68ºF will result in the wine deteriorating rapidly. Furthermore, regular swings in temperature can result in corks becoming looser, resulting in potential leakages of air into the bottle or wine out of it.
3. Store your bottles flat.
Bottles with corks should be kept in a horizontal position. To achieve this, either use racks or, if you want to store bottles out of sight and minimize the space they take up, try our wine storage boxes that let you securely store and stack your collection. Keeping your bottles horizontal helps keep the cork moist, which is important in long-term storage. If allowed to dry out, this can result in leaks, as mentioned above.
4. Control the humidity.
You might like to think that your bottle is sealed and safe, but several factors can affect the seal of a cork. In addition to the factors mentioned above, humidity can also play an important role. Overly dry storage areas can result in the cork drying out, while overly moist wine cellars or storage areas can result in labels peeling from the bottles, making them hard to display or sell.
5. Protect wine bottles from light.
It doesn’t matter if you are storing your wine for just a short period or decades – keep your wine in the dark as much as possible. Direct sunlight will damage the flavors and aromas of your wine. Store your wines away from windows, preferably in a cellar, to ensure the temperature is controlled. If that’s not an option, consider using wine storage boxes to help protect your bottles from the damage caused by light.
How to Store Opened Wine
Finally, once that time has come and you have opened a treasured wine, it is essential to know how to keep it. Once opened, a well-preserved bottle of wine can last several days. The critical point to remember is to reseal the bottle as promptly and tightly as possible. If the cork is available, place some waxed paper around the cork to help slide the cork back in. If the cork is not available or is damaged, or if you prefer not to use the cork, use a tight-fitting rubber wine stopper instead.
Follow these tips, and the wines you lay down today should be ready to enjoy over the coming months, years, or decades.