June 13, 2011
Proper Wine Storage/Cellaring
Joining a wine of the month club is great fun and informative but what do you do with all the bottles?
You can drink them all, give some away as gifts, or find a good way to store them. Many people have them stored in their kitchen cabinets, on top of the fridge, or even spread throughout other rooms in their houses! 99.9% of the time these are not the best conditions for wine storage. Consider getting a wine storage cabinet or wine cellar.
Ideally wine should be stored in a location where temperature and humidity can be controlled. It depends on your climate, but in many homes this can be accomplished in a basement. What if you don’t have a basement? Where will you store all these great wines? What you want to look for is a cool place where your wines can be laid flat, and not have big temperature swings.
Most wines need to be in a continual temperature (about 52 degrees), allowing the wine to preserve properly and age itself correctly. In addition to ideal storage temperature, keep the humidity up towards the 70% range. This will help keep the corks from drying and staying airtight. If you see any labels that have loosened or have any mold growth, then the humidity is probably too high.
In many locales, the climate may dictate that you purchase a small cabinet wine cellar. These units take up little space and are designed to maintain your wine in traditional wine cellar conditions. Cabinets on the market today can hold anywhere from 12 to 400 bottles. These freestanding wine cellars range in price from about $100 to about $3,000.
In determining your cellar needs, it pays to overestimate the quantity of wine you will collect in coming years. It is surprising just how fast your cellar can fill once the wine bug hits!
