Ever wondered how to store your wine? Well, there are a number of different ways to store your wine properly, whether it’s your everyday bottles or special ones you’re saving for an occasion (which your significant other inadvertently drinks with his friends on a random Tuesday night.) If you’re starting a collection, I advise investing in a 12-16 bottle wine refrigerator. Set it to 55’ to keep both reds and whites in top form. If you start accumulating a serious collection, invest in a dual temperature wine refrigerator and store your whites at 50’ to 55’ and reds between 55’ and 60’.
But you don’t have to invest in a super hi-tech wine fridge to properly store your wine for the short or long term.
The first thing you want to do is remove any bottles you have stored in an ever-popular place—the top of the refrigerator. Wine stored on the top of the fridge experiences fluctuating temperatures, vibration, and will be hotter than ideally desired. And avoid sunlight which further degrades a wine. An ideal place for storage is a cool basement that maintains a consistent low temperature. For city dwellers who may not have a basement (like myself), a dark, cool closet should do the trick. And store your bottles sideways to keep the cork in contact with the wine which ensures it doesn’t dry out and allow oxygen in. Wine bottles with corks and Champagne shouldn’t be stored in the refrigerator for more than two weeks.
So, if you have a bottle of Veuve sitting in the fridge, pop it open, and enjoy it tonight—because the best place for storing wine (albeit very temporarily) is in your glass.
Originally published on SwirlEvents
