Home Wine Storage

Let me say up front that if you have less than a dozen bottles of medium quality/price wine and you're going to have them on hand for less than two weeks, just keeping them out of direct sun and in a spot where they won't get bumped too much and will stay at a reasonably consistent temperature is enough.



You don't need to buy anything, and you don't need to worry. However, for the rest of you, who may have just recieved a shipment of a $300-$500 case of very fine wine from that French or California coutryside winery, you may want to go a bit further. Or have a party.

Low tech home wine storage

For starters, the wine should be stored horizontally, so the wine is in contact with the cork. It should be kept out of direct sunlight, and should be kept in one spot where it won't getted bumped or vibrate (this stirs up the natural sediments in the wine and compromises the taste). Also keep the wine away from any strong smells (do not put the case of wine next to a bag of onions, or even near the onions). The other critical requirement is temperature. Between 50 and 55 degrees is ideal, but between 40 and 65 degrees will do. Any lower and you risk freezing (very, very bad) and any higher and you risk the wine aging too fast or potentially even souring -- just a bit, but possibly enough to taste.

So now about the low tech storage. Enter your basement. Most basements are close enough to the "good enough" temperature range to pass muster. Of course, don't put your treasured case of wine near the paint supplies, or in a spot where the sun from that one window actually does come through for two months in summer. Otherwise, you're probably OK putting about six months to a year worth of medium to good quality wine in your basement. If the temperature down there does hit 70 degrees for a week during the summer, its not ideal, but its hardly an emergency.

Higher tech wine storage

If you raised your eyebrows about whether or not a week of 70 degree temperature for your wine was an emergency or not, you may be in the camp that should upgrade to a wine refrigerator, or possibly even a wine cellar. Or, you may not have a basement or anywhere else that meets good wine storage requirements. Enter the wine refrigerator. These $60 to $300 refrigerators keep wine chilled at a nearly perfect, consistent temperature. You can get them for as few as eight bottles, or for as many as 80 bottles or more. If you want to protect and preserve any more than 100 bottles in a temperature-controlled environment, you may want to consider a wine cellar.

"Wine cellars" can be as small as wine closets. I suppose you could rig a very low tech one in a closet, provided the smell-issue was under control, and the very air-conditioner you were using did not make the air inside the closet too moist or dry. Usually, though, when people want a wine cellar, they hire contractors who specialize in wine storage, and the bill comes to $2000 for a very modest solution to $20,000 and up for someone's wine collection.