Hi, I am talking about wine today and wine storage is an issue that is very important that a lot of people do not really think about.
I am down here in the basement today because when you are storing wine, especially if it is something that you want to hold onto that needs some age, consistency is the main issue. We are in the basement because basements are often cool and they stay cool throughout the year.
There are other ways to store wine, one of which is a wine cooler that you can buy at Home Depot or stores like that, that keeps wine at constant temperature and you can adjust the controls and keep it at the same temperature and also at the same humidity. But if you can not afford one of those and you do have a basement—that is a good place to keep it because it is dark down here and it is cool.
We are going to pretend this wine bottle is full because unfortunately all the unopened bottles I brought me, now been consumed. But once you put it on the wine rack in your basement or wherever that is dark and as cool as possible, just leave it there.
Occasionally, you are going to turn it because you want to keep the cork moist that helps it from drying out and allowing air to come in and go ahead and break the wine down.
Some places not to keep wine are in direct sunlight, on top of the refrigerator because of the motion, any place that is going to get the wine get ‘jazzled’ because as I said consistency is important.
If you can adjust the temperature between 60 and 65 degrees is probably a good way to start. If you are trying to keep the white wine shelved about 55 degrees is what you want to served it out. Because when people talk about room’s temperature, they assumed that it is whatever your room temperature is in your house, but that might be warmer than one should have actually be served because when these temperatures where decided, I think they are thinking more of like Chateaus in France where it tends be cooler, the concrete walls and cold air flow, so just keep wine in a cool, dark place.
Once you have opened a wine, as of the case with this one, you want to go ahead and put the cork back in as tightly as possible. If you have a split bottle which is a half bottle of wine and you only have a little bit of wine left just like this, it is good to put it into a smaller bottle, because the less air contact that the wine has, the better it is going to stay fresh.
In this case, there is not very much so it is not going to last very long. But even if you have red or white wine, put it back in the fridge after you have opened it because that is also going to slow down the breakdown process. That will give you an extra day as far as the freshness is concerned.
And if you have a sweeter wine like Port or a late harvest Gewürztraminer—the more sugar, it will get lot of wine to stay longer so you can actually get a couple of weeks out of a wine like that as suppose to a couple of days.
So that is wine storage—cool, dark place to keep it fresh.
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