People say you have to know a little about wine to enjoy drinking it. Perhaps the more you discover how hard it is to maintain, the more stressful it gets.
Be that as it may, storing wine is necessary and inevitable. If you’re a wine enthusiast, learning even the basics is required. Owning a standing wine rack cannot spare you the drawbacks, so it’s still better to know backup information.
Store Your Wine in the Rack Horizontally
This technique will allow you to ensure that the cork of the wine is wet. The cork mustn’t dry out. Because if it does, it will contract, and the air will get inside the bottle.
If the air gets inside, it will turn your wine into a pickled liquid grape. No one wants to drink wine that tastes like cider.
Store the Wine with the Label Up
If you’re always struggling with checking which wine you should drink, store it with the label up.
This position will help you greatly in terms of:
- Not destroying your wine rack or putting scratches on it. If the label is visible outright, you don’t need to disturb all the bottles.
- The lees that may form inside the bottle can be easily accessible. The sediments must be visually clear to help you decide on the pouring approach. If the residue forms well, you can directly serve it from the bottle. Otherwise, if it’s not good quality, you can transfer it first to another glass or bottle.
- If you plan to make the wines an investment, then labelling them up in the racks will avoid possible damage. Damage that will disqualify the authenticity of the appreciated value of your wine collection.
Place Your Wine Racks in an Environment with a Constant Temperature
The ideal storage temperature for all wines is 55 degrees Fahrenheit, or 13 degrees Celsius. Place them where the atmospheric temperature doesn’t fluctuate upon deciding to construct your racks. If the wines are placed in a changing environment, it will greatly affect the colour of the wine.
Place a Bucket of Water Beneath the Wine Racks
The water will evaporate and help the racks maintain at least 50%. For your information, 70% is the ideal humidity level. So, strive to maintain this level as much as possible.
Place Your Wine Rack Where the Light Doesn’t Enter
Sunlight will prematurely age your wine. Other than sunlight, you also need to watch out for all possible transmitters of UV light, such as:
- Bulb lights made of incandescent or sodium vapour
- Fluorescent lighting
- The glass front of your refrigerator
Position Your Wine Rack Away from Common Household Odour
This solution will spare your wine from contamination and spoilage. It’s well-established that corks are very sensitive, and even air is one of their vulnerabilities. How much more if food smell, petroleum, and other chemical smells enter the cork?
Hence, it’s important to create an air filter system just in case odours are unavoidable. Also, ensure that your standing wine rack is placed in an area with good ventilation.
Overall, drawbacks are not permanent. You just need to be prepared to face them.