4 Easy Tips for Perfectly Storing your Wine

So you've just got an amazing deal on your favourite wine and have stocked up; where are you going to store it?

By Kitchen Gadget Box

So you've just got an amazing deal on your favourite wine and have stocked up; where are you going to store it?

If your aim is intending to store your wine for more than a few weeks or months its time to have a look at some proper storage facilities and dispense with the wine rack and the ordinary fridge and perhaps look at investing in a wine cooler fridge for your home.

How to Store Wine Properly at Home

So you’ve just got an amazing deal on your favourite wine and have stocked up; where are you going to store it?

Keeping it Cool, But Not Too Cool

Public enemy no.1 for wine is heat. When temperature rise above 70°F all wines will age quicker than is good for them. If it rises even higher your wine could well ‘cook’ in the bottle and when you go to drink it the flavours and aromas will be flat and pretty bland.

The ideal temperature range for storing any wine is between 45° – 65°F, and you will often see 55° cited as the optimum temperature. This isn’t cast in stone however and a good quality wine can survive outside of this range as long it isn’t stored for years and isn’t being subject to constant highs then lows in temperature.

A household fridge is fine for the very short term but being stored at a temperature which is too cold can also affect wine. Temperatures in fridges regularly drop below 45° in order to keep our perishable foods edible and the lack of moisture can also cause corks to dry out eventually. This is turn allows air to get in and damage the quality of the wine. Never be tempted to pop wine into a freezer to cool it quickly either. It can be forgotten about very easily and once the liquid begins to turn to ice it can expand forcing out the cork.

Keeping It Steady

Instead of fretting about your wine being at the perfect 55°F you should be more concerned about frequent or extreme changes in temperature. Rather than constantly checking the temperature and stressing about it dropping a couple of degrees below or rising a couple of degrees above aim for a more consistent temperature range. Chances are that from being bottled to entering your house they haven’t been environmentally controlled all the way but will have remained within an acceptable temperature range. This is where wine fridges really come into their own as whether its the heat of the summer, the heat of the central heating or the biting cold of winter your wine will be completely unaffected.

Keep it dim

Another no no for wine storage, particularly in the long term, is sunlight. This is the main reason why vintners use coloured glass for their bottles, a sort of sunglasses for wine if you will. Fluorescent lights do emit a very small amount of UV light which will only really cause damage in the long term. Even if you have your wine fridge outdoors beneath your bar the shade will ensure sunlight never touches your bottles, and every bottle will taste absolutely perfect.

Where you Should Keep Your Bottles

Very few of us are blessed with a cool and relatively damp free basement which we can turn into a wine cellar. This why wine fridges are so popular these days as they replicate the condition and temperatures of a cellar. One handy tip to remember is that if you do purchase a wine fridge the cooler the place you locate it the less work it will have to do and thus more energy efficient it will be. Somewhere like a garage is an idea spot as the temperature won’t be as affected by the weather as the rest of house and few have central heating in their garages.

What are the Best Wines for your Wine Fridge?

If you are taking the step from rack and refrigerator to full on wine fridge then congratulations, you are about to become a member of a club that isn’t quite as exclusive as it was a couple of years ago! The wine bar culture is very much alive and kicking and the amount of wine bought by both sexes for consumption in the home has never been higher.

Before you decided to embark on buying your wine fridge you will have read all the info about the ideal temperature and humidity etc and the purpose of this article is to point you in the right direction as regards to actually stocking your wine fridge. This might seem the easy bit but it’s something well worth thinking about once you have your shiny new model in the house and it’s begging to be filled. Here are just a few ideas to ensure that wine fridge serves its purpose at all times and never becomes a member of the gadget hall of shame.

The first rule to remember is that you should put in your wine fridge cooler, the wine that you personally want to drink. Don’t get carried away with glossy magazine articles which tell you what to put in your fridge, half the time these are sponsored by the wine producers themselves so of course they want you to stock up on their stuff. Many have bought wine that they think they have to drink, and that’s a lot of money you are pouring down the sink when that aromatic bouquet equates to a taste resembling a sweaty sock soaked in vinegar.

It takes time and experimentation to discover which wines you really like, and once you find one that really suits your palate chances are you will enjoy it for life. That’s not to say you shouldn’t keep trying different ones as this is how we become aficionados and build up our knowledge as well as our collections. Here are just a few of the wines you are more than likely to stock in your fridge to give you an idea of what to buy.

School Night Wine
The easy drinking wine you buy to relax in the evenings after a long hard day. These will the wines that you look forward to having a glass of while you’re at work and that you will drink whether you’re on your own or have company.

Dinner Party Wines
A selection of wines that will complement the meal you are serving. Likewise having a few bottles of these in your fridge is handy for when you are invited out for dinner at short notice and want to take a bottle along with you.

Party Wines
The cheaper, fun wines you will stock up on for larger gatherings than a dinner party when the drink will be flowing freely and you’ll all be having a great time.

Special Occasion Wines
Self explanatory really; those wines you may have bought, or been given, that you crack open to celebrate a special event such as a birthday, anniversary, work promotion etc.

Ageing Wine
Those that will mature and improve with age which you will want to store for a long period of time.