Storing wine: now there is a vast subject for this episode. Welcome to this 5th episode of The Club, the podcast that helps you learn wine simply so you can finally enjoy it to the full. In the previous episode, we learned everything there is to know about the wine label. Now that you know how to read a wine label well, let’s move on to storing wine. If you haven’t listened to the previous episodes, I encourage you to do so now, before continuing the series. If you like this podcast, I also encourage you to take a few seconds to give it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts. It’s the best way to encourage me to keep going. You can also join The Club to learn wine simply. Today, we are going to discover how to store wine. As you now know, wine is not a drink like any other. Storing it is therefore something quite specific. It isn’t enough to set a bottle down somewhere and consider it stored. By the end of this episode, you will know exactly how to age wine, but also how to keep a bottle once it has been opened.
How to age wine
The first question to answer is “how to age wine”. Perhaps you have bought some lovely bottles en primeur and you now want to age them and build a fine wine cellar. You are at the start of your career as a collector and you want to start storing wine properly. Worse still, someone has given you a bottle to drink in about ten years’ time, but you don’t know what to do with it in the meantime. In short, many wines are made to be aged and enjoyed after long years. We will talk about that in a future episode. The question I need to answer, though, is: “how do I store my wines?”. There are several answers to this.
Where to store wine
There are three solutions for storing your wine well: the natural cellar, the electric wine cellar, or the shared wine cellar.
Natural wine cellar
First, if you are lucky enough to have a natural cellar, this can be an excellent option. Check that your cellar has a constant temperature level and monitor its humidity level. It will be the perfect place to store your wine. You can fit out the space with a few racks to organise your cellar well and find your way around all your wines. One of the important rules for storing wine is to keep it away from light and in a horizontal position. So apply these recommendations.
Electric wine cellar
If you aren’t lucky enough to have a natural cellar, you can turn to an electric wine cellar. Buying a wine cellar can be an excellent investment for storing your wine well. They come in every size: from the custom wine cellar for slightly wealthy enthusiasts to the mini wine cellar that can find its place in your kitchen or living room. These solutions are very handy if you want to have your stock of bottles to hand. I have written a few articles about wine cellars. They can easily help you make the right choice. You will find the links in the podcast description.
Renting a wine cellar
Finally, one last solution is available to you. You can use cellar management services. These let you store wine away from home in shared cellars. You then pay a subscription, often per month and per bottle. Renting a wine cellar lets you store your wine in ideal conditions even if you don’t have the room to do it at home. The temperature and humidity are therefore at the perfect level, the cellar is monitored and, in general, insurance applies to your bottles. This solution is therefore very attractive if you are storing high-value bottles. Some services go even further and buy wine for you in order to build your cellar gradually. This is the case, for example, with Wine Sitting. If you buy wine en primeur, be aware that your merchant will normally offer you an off-site wine storage option when your bottles arrive. If you don’t yet know what en primeur means, be patient, you will find out in the coming episodes.
Wine aging temperature
A question that comes up often: what is the ideal temperature for a wine cellar? The answer is not the same for a wine service cellar and an aging cellar. If it is to age your wine, the right answer is 12°C. Temperature is an important element for the aging of your wine. Indeed, a temperature that is too low slows down the wine’s development. Conversely, a temperature that is too high speeds up its development and could leave you with a wine past its best. However, the wine cellar temperature is not the only element you need to take into account to store your wine well. You also need to watch the humidity level. A humidity level, that is the moisture level, of 75% is recommended. Other elements should be considered: you must keep wine away from light and avoid vibrations. All these elements are important when choosing your wine storage solution and when choosing your wine cellar. Finally, you can find many wine cellar management apps that let you manage your cellar as well as possible, get statistics and alerts about your wines. We have also written an article on this, it is in the description.
Storing wine once opened
Let’s now move on to the second part of this podcast. You have opened a bottle of wine but it is a little too big to finish? That’s not a problem. We are going to teach you how to keep wine well once it has been opened. Don’t worry, you don’t have to drink a whole bottle of wine in one go. You can keep wine once opened for a few days without any problem. Whether it is to store white wine after opening or to store red wine after opening, there are three tips to follow.
Limit contact with oxygen
First, put the wine in the smallest container possible. You can, for example, decant it into a half bottle. Wine is wary of oxygen. So, to store wine you must limit contact with oxygen. The smaller the container you choose, the more space the wine will fill and the better you will be able to keep it. You can also use tools such as a vacuum pump to draw the oxygen out of a bottle. This tool isn’t very expensive and can help you store your wine well.
Buy a vacuum pump to store wine
Keep wine away from light
Second tip: place your bottle somewhere away from light. Wine is wary of light, and sunlight in particular. So place the bottle somewhere dark or sheltered from these lights.
Keep opened wine cool
Third tip: place the bottle of wine somewhere cool. A utility room will do the job nicely for keeping your bottle of wine once it has been opened. You can store red wine and white wine in the fridge once the bottle is open. However, remember to take the bottle out before your tasting to let it come back up to temperature, especially for red wine. If you don’t, the taste of the wine may be absent for several long minutes before the wine warms up. If you are lucky enough to have a natural cellar in your home, you can keep wine there once it is opened without any problem. To sum up, I have three recommendations to help you keep wine after it has been opened:
- Limit contact between the wine and the open air;
- Place the bottle somewhere cool;
- Place the bottle somewhere out of the sun.
How long can you keep wine once opened?
How long a bottle of wine keeps varies depending on the type of wine you are drinking. As a general rule, though, count on two to three days. Beyond that, the taste of the wine will probably start to deteriorate. Before wrapping up, I wanted to touch on vin jaune. We will come back to this oxidative wine in a few episodes. For now, just know that you can keep it once opened without any problem: it isn’t afraid of oxidation. So you can stretch out the pleasure for months, even years. Good news, this is the case for many oxidative wines but we will talk about all that in upcoming episodes.
And there you go, well done, you now know how to store your wine well, whether to age it or after opening a bottle. Once again we have seen that wine is not a drink like any other. It needs special care to be kept well. Learning wine is crucial to finally being able to enjoy it fully. So I will see you in the next episode. In the meantime, to keep up your wine-learning efforts, thanks to The Club. You can sign up for The Club and learn wine simply. It’s free, it’s interesting and if you ever change your mind, you can unsubscribe whenever you like.
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