All About Wine And Its Goodness!

If you’re like me, you like your wine…a lot, and you drink it after work, with a special meal, or for a particular occasion. You may have a bottle or two around the house. That’s what I always did but I didn’t know one thing: how to properly store my wine.

Though there is a whole world out there of wine rules and standards that many enthusiasts follow to a ‘t’, I was never one to follow their convention. I just figured knowing the simple stuff would be enough. At first, I didn’t use a Ravenscroft wine decanter or even gave a second thought to the type of crystal wine glasses I was using. This went for how I stored my wine as well. I decided to try something different, I stored my wine the right way and it made a huge difference in the taste of the wine.

Temperature: It does not matter what kind of wine you have, it should always be stored in a cool dry place! This is why people have wine cellars for optimal taste! While the best tempurature for wine varies slightly, 55 degrees is a good target.Any warmer than this temperature and you will definitly notice a difference in the taste of your wine. Moreover, make sure that the temperature is steady and not subject to fluctuation, as this will dramatically alter the contents of your wine bottle.

Light: Make sure if you want your wine to retain its original full flavor, that you store it in a place where not a lot of light can get at it. Wine that sits in the sunlight for long periods of time will prematurly age your wine in a bad way.

Humidity: It’s not the heat it’s the humidity, keeping humidity level right are another key to optimal wine storage. It should be, on average, more humid than not in order to keep the wine corks from shrinking. Air will oxidize your wine, so make sure you don’t get cork shrinkage. So, what the right humidity level for storing wine? Between 65-75%. So it only makes sense that basements and cellars are perfect for wine storage.

Sideways: This may seem a strange one to some, it did to me, but there has got to be a reason so many wine racks and cellars hold their wine bottles sideways instead of upright, right? Yes. It is because in order to ensure that the cork is protected from shrinking, it needs to stay moist. That said, the best way to keep the cork moist is to store your wine on it’s side.

Travel: When traveling with your wine, you know, to a party or to a BYOB resaurant be sure to use a wine tote bag.  This will help keep your wine at the right temperature and keep it protected from bouncing around.

Tags: bags, carriers, humidity, storage, temperature, travel, wine

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 4:33 am and is filed under food and wine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.