Personalizing a wine collection in accordance with your taste is one of the many joys of enjoying wine. However, handpicking wines and buying them isn’t all that you have to do. Preserving them appropriately is an integral part of the process, and the impacts of great storage are immense. You don’t even need a stellar wine cellar for storing wine at home.  

Even a simple wine rack that caters to your taste buds and mood can make do. When your wines are preserved correctly, as they say, there’ll be nothing finer than your aging wines!

Here are seven wine preserving essentials that’ll certainly deliver the best results.

Clocking the Perfect Temperature

Temperature is the first metric to get right because too hot or too cold is likely to spoil your wine like nothing else. In general, the ideal temperature for wine storage is 55°F but this differs from wine to wine. Contact your manufacturer to get into the specifics of your particular wine. 

Temperatures higher than 70°F ages your wine quickly, and if it’s much more, the wine ‘cooks’ in the bottle, resulting in flat flavors and aromas. On the lower end, anything below 25°F will freeze the wine. Most importantly, make sure the temperature isn’t fluctuating too much because the cork expands and contracts to depend on the kind of fluctuation which results in the wine seeping out (don’t mind minor fluctuations though!) 

Therefore, it’s imperative to keep the temperature of your wine storage as stable as possible.

Maintaining a wine fridge

A wine refrigerator, which is also called a wine cooler, is an absolute necessity for storing wines. It provides you with a consistently cool, dark, and moist storage space. The wine fridge keeps your stored wines cold and dry, at 50-60˚F with the perfect humidity and safe from cross-contamination from food odors that may be in your refrigerator. 

A top quality fridge will also have a separate cooler setting for champagnes as well. If pricing and expenditure are a matter of concern, keep in mind that wines can be a major investment of your money themselves, thus, securing a proficient wine fridge is just a method to protect your investment. Before you buy a cooler, you should research the reviews. Click here to get reviews about EdgeStar Wine Coolers.

Getting the Humidity Right

Anything in the range of 50 to 80 percent works well (with 70 percent being considered ideal) in storing wine. In theory, dry air makes the corks dry out and seepage and air bubbles are seen due to the wine’s vulnerability to oxygen. 

On the other hand, higher humidity causes mold to grow on cork and bottles and results in labels peeling off, making them difficult to display or sell as they lose their attractiveness.

Turn Down the Lights

Light is a crucial factor for long-term wine storage. UV rays from sunlight damage the flavors and aromas of wine thus degrading and prematurely aging them, which is why vintners put colored glass bottles to use, to use them as something like sunglasses. 

However, keeping your wine bottles in a dark space is preferable. You don’t have to worry about light bulbs or interior lights as much, but they can fade your labels in the long run. Incandescent bulbs are usually a bit safer than fluorescent bulbs, as they emit fewer UV rays.

Control Vibration

Theories state that vibration speeds up the chemical reactions in the liquid of the wine and thus damages it in the long run. Vibrations disturb sediments in the bottle and mess up the aging process. So, consider keeping your wines away from any source of vibration, such as your dryer, washer, exercise area, or even the stereo system. With this being said, you don’t need to fret about vibrations if you’re only into short-term storage.

Position Your Bottles Correctly

Be absolutely sure to store your wine horizontally if you’re doing it on a wine rack. Otherwise, your cork will dry out and cause seepage and premature aging as well. In the case of screw-capped wine bottles, you don’t have to keep them on their sides. However horizontal storage is the correct and most efficient way to store your wines as it keeps the cork moist, allows easy access, and maximum space, and it doesn’t harm your wines!

Serving and Storing Open Bottles of Wine

Allow the wine temperature to fall or rise to the perfect serving temperature when you’re preparing to serve a stored bottle to secure the complete aroma and flavor of the wine. Serve red wines chilled, just short of the room temperature at 58 to 65˚F. However, the concise temperature is set according to the age of the wine. 

In general, older wines are better off at 61 to 65˚F whereas younger wines are a bit on the colder side. White wines are meant to be served colder than the red wines; they’re required to be chilled between 45 to 55˚F. Lastly, champagnes should be served the coldest, at 38 to 45˚F.

An opened bottle of wine lasts 3 to 5 days. Recorking an open wine promptly and lightly is the key to expand the shelf life of an open wine while keeping its initial features intact. Some wax paper around the cork is placed and is slid back to its original position. With the courtesy of the wax, the cork will be eased into the top. Ensure that there are no stray parts of the cork dropping into the bottle. On the other hand, sometimes recorking isn’t possible if the cork is discarded or splintered. 

In that instance, a rubber wine stopper creates a satisfactory and tight seal in your opened wine bottle. Lastly, a wine vacuum pump is a decent upgrade option, enabling you to pull air out of an open bottle, creating an almost airtight seal.

Preserved correctly, wines grow in quality and value. They last for even centuries with the perfect storage facilities. On the contrary, poor storage can even ruin the best of wines. Thus, store your wines to perfection and watch your wine experiences fascinate you!