How To Put Up Wine Without Putting Yourself in Debt
One of the things I love most in life is a good glass of wine. It's good for your heart, relaxes you and is less fattening than beer. Two things I hate most in life are obsessive, pretentious wine connoisseurs and those people who simply toss their wine in the pantry in a misguided attempt to be charming and show that they are "down-to-earth". I desire to become neither, but balancing between the two can be precarious. I don't want to take out a second mortgage to store my wine, but on the other hand, I understand how proper storage can make a big difference in taste and in some cases, save the wine.
Like most people, I don't actually have a 'collection' - just something nice for dinner and a few spare bottles in case of unexpected company. My friend Lisa from New Zealand who is a wine taster for high-end restaurants often lectures me, telling me how to cellar some wine so I can get secondary flavors and aromas - some depth, body and personality to it.
She always says,
"Look, winemaking is an art - it's something humans have been perfecting for thousands of years. Wishing to enjoy an art form you love at its best is not pretentious; it is a necessity to living a fine life. Look at it this way. Putting your wine where it won't get destroyed is the same as putting your milk where it won't go bad. Even if you just buy it to drink it, you don't want to drink it when it's gone rotten. It doesn't matter if it only cost $25 or even $15 - that's not the point. You can buy good wine for that price and it will need to be kept properly."
Finally I decided to take her advice and asked her to brief me on the basics of wine storage. She explained that, wine is best stored with 75 per cent relative humidity. You want to keep the corks from getting crumbly, but you don't want them to mold. You want a temperature of about 55° Fahrenheit. In fact, you want the temperature where your wine is stored to remain as constant as possible or the wine will turn.
For instance, if you put a bottle of Chardonnay in the fridge for several hours before dinner, it starts out touching the cork. But by the time you pour the wine, it has gone down from the cork to the shoulders of the bottle. That's because wine contracts and expands in volume at a rate seven times more than glass. That means, when the wine gets cold, it contracts, leaving space in the bottle and lets in oxygen - especially with the old-fashioned corks. It's the oxygen that turns it to vinegar. Don't stand the bottles up - lay them on their sides, so the cork does its job properly - it's got to stay moist and have a good seal. If the cork dries out, it lets in oxygen.
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