Hot Tips For Summer Series: Keeping Your Cool
Here's another frequent question I get:
How do I keep my wine cool when I don’t have a cellar?
Marketers are all over this question. I get a lot of emails from “wine lifestyle” catalogs trying to sell me a $10,000 wine cooler. As much as I would like to own one of these dual-zone, 200-bottle, sliding drawer, mahogany beauties, I’m finding hard to justify the cost.
No, I don’t have a basement. Current California Earthquake codes make cellars a rare commodity here. So, where can I put the wine? The best place to store the bottles is in a room or a closet in the middle of the home. Of course the bottles should be on their sides to keep the corks wet. Ideally, you should put the wine as low to the floor as possible. A dark hall closet is perhaps the best option.
It’s not just the heat that can hurt the wine, but big swings in temperature are bad over time as well. This is particularly true if the bottle has a cork with a weak seal. Wines are typically bottled in the 60-degree Fahrenheit range. When the bottle heats up, the liquid inside expands. This creates high pressure in the bottle that tries to force the air inside the bottle past the cork. In extreme cases the air can force the cork out of the bottle. When the weather cools around the bottle, the opposite is true; the contraction of the liquid forms a vacuum and can suck air past a weak cork back into the bottle. This back and forth of air, over time, can hasten the oxidation of the wine. Oxidized wine can be flat and lifeless without a smell of fruit. In extreme cases it may taste more like a vinegar not even worthy of fish and chips.
How do I keep my wine cool when I don’t have a cellar?
Marketers are all over this question. I get a lot of emails from “wine lifestyle” catalogs trying to sell me a $10,000 wine cooler. As much as I would like to own one of these dual-zone, 200-bottle, sliding drawer, mahogany beauties, I’m finding hard to justify the cost.
No, I don’t have a basement. Current California Earthquake codes make cellars a rare commodity here. So, where can I put the wine? The best place to store the bottles is in a room or a closet in the middle of the home. Of course the bottles should be on their sides to keep the corks wet. Ideally, you should put the wine as low to the floor as possible. A dark hall closet is perhaps the best option.
It’s not just the heat that can hurt the wine, but big swings in temperature are bad over time as well. This is particularly true if the bottle has a cork with a weak seal. Wines are typically bottled in the 60-degree Fahrenheit range. When the bottle heats up, the liquid inside expands. This creates high pressure in the bottle that tries to force the air inside the bottle past the cork. In extreme cases the air can force the cork out of the bottle. When the weather cools around the bottle, the opposite is true; the contraction of the liquid forms a vacuum and can suck air past a weak cork back into the bottle. This back and forth of air, over time, can hasten the oxidation of the wine. Oxidized wine can be flat and lifeless without a smell of fruit. In extreme cases it may taste more like a vinegar not even worthy of fish and chips.
posted by Todd at Sunday, August 13, 2006
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