![]() Damp coal holes are good for the condition of the wine but can rapidly damage labels and make wine more difficult to re-sell. If wine is stored in too dry an atmosphere for several years, the corks can dry out and stop being an effective seal. (This is why wine is sold increasingly in almost black bottles, and why champagne is often wrapped in tissue paper or a special light-proof cellophane.) Strong light can adversely affect the taste of wine, particularly sparkling wine, and particularly if the bottles are made from clear or pale glass. Maximum and minimum thermometers can be very useful for monitoring potential places to store wine. On the other hand, there is a temperature, about 30 ☌ (86 ☏), above which a wine's more volatile compounds may be boiled off forever, and the colour and clarity is affected. In very general terms the ideal wine storage temperature is probably between 10 and 15 ☌ (50 and 59 ☏), but no great harm will come to wine stored between 15 and 20 ☌ (59 and 68 ☏) so long as the temperature does not fluctuate too dramatically causing the wine to expand and contract rapidly, with a risk of letting air in. ![]() ![]() ![]() Care should be taken than it never falls below -4 ☌ (25 ☏), the temperature at which the lightest wines freeze and can fatally force corks out of bottlenecks. The actual temperature at which wine is stored is also important, evolution being accelerated at higher temperatures. The warmer it is stored, the faster it will mature (because heat inevitably speeds up all reactions and vice versa). That amount of oxygen may reach harmful levels if temperatures fluctuate dramatically.įor the moment, most wine racks in commercial circulation are blithely ignorant of this new theory, however, so if you want to store wine in a place in which the temperature can vary by more than 10 ☌ (18 ☏) it might be wise to put a wedge underneath the front of the rack so as to tilt the whole thing at the (newly) approved angle.įor the reasons outlined previously, temperature fluctuation is the most serious hazard for wine storage, although the cooler wine is kept, the slower, and very possibly more interestingly, it will develop. Then when the temperature drops, the air bubble contracts to form a vacuum and oxygen may be drawn into the bottle. When bottles are stored horizontally the distance of the air bubble from the cork means that when higher temperatures cause it to expand, wine may be forced out between the cork and bottle-neck (the sugary deposits round the neck of many sweet wines are cited as evidence for this). This will keep the cork damp but allow any expansion and contraction of the air bubble due to temperature variation to result in air, and not wine, passing through the cork. There is a revolutionary school of thought, however, which suggests that it may be better for wine to store bottles at an angle, which ensures that both wine and the air bubble are in contact with the cork. Screwcapped bottles can be stored at any angle. For this reason, wine bottles have traditionally been stored on their sides, so that the wine keeps the cork thoroughly damp and swollen to fill the bottleneck. If, however, the cork dries out and eventually shrinks so that it no longer acts as an airtight seal, it may start to allow oxygen in to the wine and spoil it. Once it is firmly stoppered in a bottle, wine should be protected from its greatest enemy, the oxygen in the air.
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