Storing Wine

Video Transcript

"Hi, I’m Farley talking about wine today and wine storage is an issue but is very important and a lot of people don’t want to think about. I am down here in the basement because when you are storing wine especially if it is something you want to hold onto if it needs some age, consistency is the main issue. They are in a basement because basements are often cool and they still cool throughout the year. There are other ways to store wine one which is a wine cooler that you can buy at Home Depot or stores like that that keeps wine at a constant temperature. You can adjust the controls and keep it at the same temperature and also same humidity. If you can’t afford one of those and if you have a basement, that is a good place to keep it because it is dark down here and it is cool. We are going to pretend this wine bottle was full because unfortunately all the unopened bottles I brought with me have now been consumed but once you put it on the wine rack in your basement or wherever, that is dark and cool as possible. Just leave it there. Occasionally you are going to want to turn it because you want to keep the cork moist. That helps it from drying out and allowing air to come in and go ahead and break the wine down. Some places not to keep wine are: in direct sunlight, on top of the refrigerator because of the motion, any place that the wine is going to get jostled because I said consistency is important. If you can adjust the temperature between 60 and 65 degrees is probably a good way to start. If you are trying to keep white wine shelved at 65 degrees which is where you want to start it out. When people talk about room temperature, they assume that is whatever your room temperature is in your house but that might be warmer than one should actually be served because when these temperatures were decided, I think they were thinking of more like Chateau’s in France where it tends to be cooler. They have concrete walls and cold air flow, so just keep wine in a cool dark place. Once you have opened the wine as is the case with this one, you are going to want to go ahead and put the cork back in as tightly as possible. If you have a split bottle, which is a half bottle of wine, and you only have a little bit of wine left, it’s good to put it in a smaller bottle because the less air contact the wine has the better it is going to stay fresh. In this case, there is not very much so it is not going to last very long but even if you have red and white wine put it back in the refrigerator after you have opened it because that is also going to slow down the break down process. It might give you an extra day as far as the freshness is concerned. If you have a sweeter wine like Port or late harvest, more sugar is going to allow the wine to stay longer so you can actually get a couple of weeks out of one like that as opposed to a couple of days. So that is wine storage. Cool dark place and keep it fresh. "