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.

Whining about the weather?

Yeah, I like to talk, but I'’m not a big on talking about the weather.

The topic is hard to avoid these days as everyone is grousing about this blistering summer. Folks visiting us from all over the country are complaining of temperatures higher than FM rock stations. The extreme heat has many of my customers speculating on why. Some swear it was engineered by the Al Gore for President committeee, while others are contemplating the "End of Times." Though the tired topic of weather might be common in the tasting room, I tend to favor a lightening storm over a heated discussion of politics or religion there.

So, over the next few days, I'm going to offer here, in this blog, my "Hot Tips For Summer Series." In the this first installment, I just want everyone to chill out and try this Chardonnay Sorbet recipe that my dad...er, uh..."cooked-up." We served it on a 100+ degree day at the Atascadero Wine Festival this summer. Even the least religious there reflexively gasped "“Oh My God!" when it hit their tongues. Oops, I didn'’t mean to stir anyone'’s convictions here...

Make it for yourself and see if you have your own religious encounter (or least an experience that could possibly change your polictical views).

Click here for The Moonstone Cellars "OMG" Chardonnay Sorbet Recipe