Wine storage tips for home cellaring:

Wine storage is a misunderstood area. People talk about microvibrations, humidity and maintaining a perfect temperature and angle to store your wine.

Whilst these are indeed important factors when ageing a fine wine built to age for many years or even multiple decades. The majority of wines under the £30 price point, which is where most people consider is approaching or even is beyond an expensive wine, these wines are typically made to be consumed within the first few years of bottling.

Therefore lets take a step back and look at what you are trying to gain from storing your wine. Given that we are not expecting any improvement to the juice that is in your bottle over the time from purchase and consumption (90% of wine in the UK is consumed within 24 hours of purchase). We need to instead look at how we prevent the bottle from turning to vinegar or changing its flavour profile unfavorably.

To avoid this it is really very simple, you want to look at 2 main aspects; Temperature and Light.

Temperature: People will tell you to store wine between 12 and 14 degrees celsius. Great if you have a wine fridge that costs a fortune and space. However, over the short term what you want to find is a place in your home that maintains a relatively consistent temperature and most likely, for most homes, you are looking for a cooler part of the home.

Light Strike: This is potentially more important to consider and is less spoken about typically. Provided you aren’t keeping your wine in the boiler cupboard, on top of the fridge or near the oven, then light is more important to consider, especially for white wines and Rosé that are often sold in clear bottles. Green or darker bottles are tinted to help mitigate the effects of light and are often used for red wine, however there is little evidence to suggest this helps much. UV light (direct sunlight) is a no go.

Luckily there have been studies on this. The findings indicated that increased light exposure led to significant changes in colour and elevated levels of compounds such as 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) and 2-furaldehyde (2F), which are indicators of quality degradation.

White wines are more susceptible to this and changes were detectable in blind tastings after as little as 2-3 hours light exposure in some cases.

In summary, don’t over think it, use a bit of common sense and enjoy.