The Beginner’s Guide to Proper Wine Storage

If you’re building a wine collection at home, it’s vital to make sure you’re storing your wines correctly. 

The easiest way to do this is to get a dedicated wine cooler that will keep your wines in optimal storage conditions. 

Wines can easily be damaged by too much light, heat or even vibrations which is why it’s so important to make sure you have a suitable area at home to house your collection. 

If you don’t have access to a wine cooler, there are several things you can do to minimize damage to your precious wine collection.  

Wines ideally need to be stored in the dark since UV rays can pass through the glass bottle and potentially degrade the wine inside. 

Sunlight can cause a chemical reaction in the wine which causes it to smell and taste like cooked cabbage! So it’s best to keep them in an area that is shielded from natural or artificial light. 

You’ll also need to make sure the place where you’re storing your wines doesn’t suffer from big temperature swings. 

The ideal temperature for storing wines is around 55°F. If your bottles get too hot the corks may pop out and they can become oxidized and taste vinegary. 

Too cold and the wine could freeze or the cork can become damaged. 

In this case, wines can lose some of their flavors and become more subdued. The best place might be a basement or storage area under the stairs where temperatures stay pretty constant - you’ll need to do a bit of research to find the sweet spot!

While storage doesn’t matter so much for inexpensive bottles or wines you’re planning to drink soon, the best place to store your prized high-end bottles is in a wine cooler. These come in all shapes and sizes with options to suit every budget. 

When choosing your wine cooler there are a lot of options to consider. 

Freestanding coolers are designed to stand alone and mimic a wine cellar by enabling long term aging in optimal conditions. 

Fully-integrated coolers normally fit into kitchen cabinet spaces and can be used for longer-term storage as well. There is also the choice of single or dual zone wine coolers; the best ones tend to have two sections which allow you to store red and white wines separately at different temperatures.

One option that I have used is the NewAir Dual Zone freestanding wine cooler which can store up to 43 bottles at between 41 and 64 degrees. The double-pane glass door prevents UV ray damage and there are even two dedicated zones for red and white wines to ensure all your bottles are kept in perfect condition. 

Have more questions about wine storage? Call or text our Wine Consulting team at 845-203-0150.