Wine Storage

For any wine lover, wine storage is important. There are three main situations in which you need to know how to store your wine: Short-term, long-term, and already opened.

Short-term wine storage is wine that will be stored for less than 6 months. These may be bottles that are just home from the store and destined to be consumed shortly or bottles that have been pulled from longer storage to be accessible for spur of the moment consumption. You should keep the bottles so that the cork stays moist, they are at their lowest stable temperature possible, the location is free of vibration, and the location is not a storage area for other things with a strong odor. Steer free of storing them in a rack on top of your fridge, that's one of the worst places to store them.

Long-term wine storage is wine that you won't be drinking for more than 6 months. Probably the good stuff that you'll be saving for those special occasions. Much the same as short-term storage, for long term you want a place that is generally dark, free of vibration, has high humidity, and a low stable temperature. The lower the temperature of your wine, the slower it will age. The humidity helps to keep the cork from drying out and minimizes evaporation. Don't have too much humidity though or else you'll start to grow mold.

This is storage for bottles of table wine that have been opened but not completely consumed. There are many methods for prolonging the life of opened table wines but even the best can only slow the degradation of the wine. Most ways to conserve this wine is to buy one of the many products on the market that help to create a vacuum in the bottle to help slow the aging of the wine. What you want to make sure to do the most is to eliminate as much contact of the air with the wine as possible and refrigerate quickly.

Now that you know how to store your wine, go buy some and plan for a party, whether it be in the distant future or this coming weekend.