Storing your wine and the importance of temperature control

Above: wines laid neck to neck in Vintec standing fridge

Whether your wine purchases are for investment, immediate consumption, or future enjoyment, the transportation and storage of a single bottle or cases are critical to the condition and ultimate enjoyability when opened.

In my experience of handling bottles and cases of wine, a less-is-more approach seems to be best. Wine doesn’t really like to be disturbed. It will react to agitation and temperature change more easily than you might realise, especially at prolonged higher temperatures. Whether you buy from a liquor outlet or a specialist store, glass bottled wine should be transported for storage immediately and not left sitting in a vehicle longer than it has to be. The boot (trunk) is better than the back seat and even better if it's kept in its box.

Whether you are storing wine at home or in a commercial setting, it needs to be away from direct light and in a cool dark space. For very short-term storage, maybe a week to a month or two, my advice is to keep it boxed and placed in the coolest space in the house, away from vibration, light and moisture. An internal wardrobe is okay as these spaces are mostly left closed and typically have little to no temperature change.

For longer-term storage, the ideal solution is a dedicated wine cabinet. These are the modern answer to storing, displaying and protecting your investments. The location and positioning of the fridge become a matter of choice and aesthetics, but I have noticed that for home use, the kitchen space has become a very real option again. We spend so much time in the cooking and dining rooms at home that it makes sense to have easy access to temperature ready wine. Modern kitchens are now designed around appliances so that a wine cabinet can become a feature piece.

Wine fridges and cabinets are not new, but those with glass doors with anti UV properties, spaces or zones for different temperature control, humidity balance and location for larger format bottles are. Fisher and Paykel’s wine cabinet is an excellent example of wine storage as it not only protects wine, it means I can move bottles from a medium or long-term zone to a ready-to-drink zone within the same cabinet. They look fantastic in the kitchen, and with over 140 bottle capacity, there’s space to rotate through off-site storage into a cabinet at home without compromise.