Enjoying a glass of wine requires more than the proper glass. You should also know how to preserve your drinks. Skip the costly sommelier classes by learning which mistakes people often make when they store wine for longer than a few weeks.
You’ll keep each bottle pristine, save money and impress everyone with your skills.
1. Keeping Bottles Upright
If you visit a local wine shop, you’ll see many bottles on display. They’ll likely lie horizontally on their shelves, which isn’t strictly a design choice. Storing them sideways prevents the corks from drying, which could ruin the wine’s quality and cause leaks. You can do the same at home.
Many liquor cabinets have built-in wine compartments that only allow sideways storage, but you can also place them horizontally on a bookshelf or within a kitchen cabinet. Measure the space where you’ll keep your bottles to ensure they fit. If they won’t, you could start a DIY project to build the wine storage of your dreams.
2. Forgetting Temperature Control
Temperature affects wine of all kinds. White wine requires storage that remains within the range of 45 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit to retain its flavor. The same experts also recommend keeping red wines within a 50-65 degrees Fahrenheit storage range. Use a countertop thermometer to track both readings or place smart thermostat sensors near your wine for automatic temperature control.
You don’t have to worry about storing your wines separately either. The 50-degree mark overlaps both wine varieties, so you can keep reds and whites at that temperature. If they don’t have temperature control during long-term storage, the conditions may affect your wine’s flavor and quality.
3. Exposing Wine to Light
There’s a reason people keep wine in cellars and not on their window sills. While both might be aesthetically pleasing, light can damage wine in unopened bottles. A leading wine chemist notes that exposure causes lightstrike. The condition causes chemical reactions in wine compounds, which is why it affects 70% to 75% of all wine varieties. You can prevent that from happening if you store your wine behind a cabinet door, in a cellar or within a fridge.
4. Vibrating Your Wine Storage
Even if you keep your wine where you solely do one of the five forms of meditation, your bottles will still encounter vibrations. Walking around your home impacts the floor, sending vibrations across the room. Years of enduring persistent shaking will change the quality of your wine.
Jostling the components inside wine bottles accelerates the aging process for red varieties.
Vibrations also affect the sulfur dioxide (SO2) in white wines, which changes the formation or degradation of volatiles that influence the flavor. Consider storing your wine in a low-traffic area if you don’t have a finished wine cellar or basement.
5. Letting Odors Linger
Porous corks are also sensitive to your home’s air quality. If you have lingering foul odors around your wine bottles, the corks may absorb the smells and affect the unopened wine. Clean your wine storage area regularly and use odor-removing products that don’t spray contaminants into the air. You’ll keep your bottles in pristine condition while enjoying a cleaner home.
6. Leaving Humidity Unchecked
You might not think dense wine bottles would be sensitive to humidity, but the corks are. Research shows that red wine stored at 70% humidity maintains its quality, while unchecked humidity ages the wine four times faster. If the cork starts drying in low-humidity conditions, you might ruin your wine and not discover the spoilage for years.
Use a countertop hygrometer to identify the humidity level around your wine and adjust it as needed. A dehumidifier could resolve higher readings if you let it run for at least a few hours before rechecking the hygrometer.
7. Checking Corks Rarely
People may think they can leave their wine bottles in unsupervised storage for years, but checking your collection is helpful. You should take a close look at the corks and test them with your fingertips. Do they have a slight spongy texture when you press on them? Are they discolored or flaking?
If you’re not sure what to make of a particular cork, take a picture. A local wine shop owner or sommelier can verify the condition. You could also take the photo to a local wine club to make new friends while getting helpful second opinions.
8. Buying Wine Without a Log
Storing wine long-term means you’ll likely accrue an extensive collection. Even if you recognize bottles from across the room, you might forget what you bought years prior. Maintain a log with each purchase. Save information like the brand, variety, vintage year and price. You can always browse it while deciding what to pair with your dinner.
A spreadsheet is also helpful while pursuing new bottles, because you might avoid purchasing what you already have if you can check your updated list. Maintain your log on a digital platform you can access anywhere to always have your wine storage within reach.
Store Your Wine Like a Pro
Keeping wine bottles at home is an art form. You must understand what’s worth storing and how to maintain each variety. Studying the mistakes people often make when keeping wine over the years will ease your learning curve, and you can exercise storage best practices while developing your collection.
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