A Simple Guide To Keeping Your Cheap Wine Fresh

You’ve researched, walked the isles, found the best cheap wines, and bought them. Now what? You don’t have a CDA wine fridge, and your place doesn’t run to wine cellars. Two great places to store your wine. 

What do you do now? These wines are only meant to be stored between six months to one year and not for many years. However, storing them correctly will ensure you get the best bouquet and taste out of each bottle.

Things To Keep In Mind

Three key components must be kept in mind when storing your wine. These go for white, red, rosè, or sparkling wines.

• Temperature
• Humidity
• Light

These three components should be considered and managed to ensure that your wine is well stored and will not spoil. If your wine does spoil, it will taste acidic or vinegary. It will also change in colour. Red wines will appear browner, and white wines will look more yellow. If the wine has turned a little, but you don’t want to drink it, you could still use it for cooking. 

Temperature

When looking at temperature, consistency is critical. Significant shifts in temperature are not good for your wine. Heat is also not good for your wine. The best temperature range is between 10 and 12 degrees Celcius.

Whilst this might be more difficult without a wine fridge built-in to your kitchen or basement, you can choose the coolest room in your house that doesn’t fluctuate in temperature.

Otherwise, you can store your wines in your regular fridge for the short term. This will work particularly well if it is very hot and you don’t have a consistently cool room.

Humidity

The humidity is essential as well. The less oxygen your wine is exposed to, the longer it will last. Again, consistency is vital. Too little humidity and your corked wines might get damaged. If you have a screw-top bottle, your humidity levels do not have to be too closely monitored.

You just don’t want to humidity to get too warm and close so that the bottles begin to sweat, as this will make the wine spoil faster.

Light

You want a dark place, well protected from any light. Light and UV rays will damage your wine. It is a good idea to store your wines in a box to ensure they are not exposed to light.

A cupboard in your coldest room could be a good idea as well. Finally, if you have a cool basement, putting those bottles into a box and keeping them, there should tick all three components.

When The Wine Has Been Opened

Once these wines are opened, you have three to five days to finish drinking the bottle before the elements diminish the flavours. Therefore, keeping your bottles airtight will be vital after you open them. Screwtops work well to maintain this. A rubber wine stopper will do the trick if you have a corked bottle and the cork won’t return to the bottle.

Once a bottle has been opened, you can store it upright to limit the surface area to which oxygen might be exposed.

Slainte

Enjoying your wine will be the ultimate reward for searching and finding the best place to store your wines until you are ready to drink them.