Practical storage tips to keep your wine at its best until the moment you pull the cork!
Nina Young FCA
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How to store wine
Practical storage tips to keep your wine at its best until the moment you pull the cork!
By The Grape Wizard a guest blogger on Liquid Lounge
If most wine is made to be drunk within a year or two of the vintage and most of us consume what we buy within days of purchase, what benefits are there to storing wine for future consumption and how do you do it?
The more I have got to know wine, the more I’ve understood a big part of the enjoyment is buying wine and waiting for the right moment to drink it. My first experience of what a joy this can bring came one New Years Eve and involved a bottle of Leoville Barton 2003. That first bottle was nothing short of a mouthful of sheer joy! Blackberry, liquorice, earth and smoky tobacco being common characteristics it was like a Willy Wonka sweet moment! In contrast, roll forward 5 New Years Eve’s later and the final 2003 Leoville Barton was plucked from the rack and poured. From the first sniff, I knew the two experiences of this fine wine were not going to be same. The wine was a shadow of its former self and had acquired a bitter, sour tar like taste –full of rubber characteristics and all flavours had gone. This wine was either stored incorrectly or time had finally caught up with its characteristics. In truth it was a bit of both!
3 golden rules for storing wine
Wine is a simple product. Remember just one thing. It is organic! Whether its that bottle of ‘90 Chateau Pavie or a plastic bottle of table wine, it will begin to breakdown as soon as the wine comes into contact with oxygen: changing the character and structure of the wine, robbing it of any vibrancy and character.
So good storage is essential. Where possible, store your bottles horizontally, in an atmosphere with a little humidity to help stop the cork from drying out and exposing the wine to oxygen. Keeping the bottles out of direct sunlight and cool and stable is also important. The wine should be subject to as little movement as possible.