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In spite of all of those wonderful old movies that show great cellars filled with every imaginable vintage of wine and wine glass, not all styles lend themselves well to wine storage. In fact, if you are planning to begin a wine cellar or any type of wine storage, it is good to check with your wine dealer to make sure just how long that favorite bottle will last before it starts to go bad.

Basic Wine Storage Information:

The reason that so many grape wine cellars are found in the basement is two fold: first, too much air can spoil a wine as fast as too much heat. The coolest places around are also those where too much air is not a problem—the basement. So, if you can, start storing your favorite bottles where the spiders and mice tend to live and the children are afraid to visit, that dusky and dank basement that you have been meaning to finish.

Additional benefits to using that basement for your wine storage facility include a greater chance that the corks on your wine will not crack due to getting dried out and there usually is not an excess of light down there. Both of these can dramatically shorten wine storage time, so it is important to be aware of not only air and temperature, but also moisture and light.

Have you ever wondered why wine storage racks are horizontal rather than vertical? Did you think that it was a space-thing? Well, the truth is that when you store your bottle horizontally rather than vertically, the corks remain moist from the enclosed wine, which also helps prevent cracking and drying.

Wine Storage and Styles:

If the wine is under ten dollars, then do not try to store it: it will not keep past six months, because it was not bottled to do so. Other, more expensive wines and liqueurs can be stored for a period of time, but there is a difference between whites and reds. Wine storage time frames for white wines are generally shorter than those for reds; in fact, it is recommended that Reislings and Chardonnays be consumed within five years for optimum taste.

The only red wines that are comparable in wine storage time frame to the whites are those that cost between twelve and twenty-five dollars or all of the Syrahs and Shiraz varieties. Otherwise, red wine storage can be in excess of five years and sometimes more than fifteen. So, it is always a good idea to check with your wine dealer when you are going to purchase a good bottle of wine, then mark it on the calendar, because there can be no better way to celebrate a college graduation than with a wine purchased on the first day of school.

References:

http://www.atime4wine.com/storagetips.htm