Storing Wine

How Should I Store My Wine?

Let's start with a quiz: Which of these two environments sound the best for a bottle of wine?

A. Upright, on top of the refrigerator under the fluorescent kitchen lights.

B. On its side, in a cool, dark space in the basement or a closet.

The answer, of course, is B. Heat, light and vibration are the worst things for wine. You want to keep your wine on its side, so the cork stays moist, in a cool, dark place where it won’t get overheated or shaken.

Here’s what we recommend:

Store at a cool temperature. For typical short-term aging, storing at temperatures under 70 will be fine, but for longer aging, somewhere around 55 degrees has been determined to be ideal. You can always go colder, but the wine's development will be that much slower. Temperatures much over 70 will slowly give a "cooked" un-fresh quality to a wine, and really warm (like the trunk of your car when parked in the sun) will cause wine to expand to a volume larger than the glass it is stored in, and either the cork will push out or the wine will leak past the cork.

Keep the cork moist. Corks need to be moist to retain a good seal and to be easily extractable. When we purchase corks, one of the tests we run is moisture content (we look for around 6 percent). Once the wine is bottled, the best way to maintain the cork moisture is to keep the wine in the bottle against the cork. This means storing it either sideways or upside down. If a wine is stored upright for a prolonged period, like on a grocery store shelf, the cork can dry out and the wine will degrade quickly upon contact with air.

Avoid prolonged exposure to light. Light, especially sunlight and fluorescent light, can cause chemical changes in the wine that can give it an off-flavor and skunky aroma. When this happens, the wine is called "light struck."
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