It’s exciting times at our household.
After a long wait, our flat is almost ready for us to move in. We can now finally unpack all our gear that have been left in storage. We’ll have all the things we want where we want them. And, very importantly, I’ll have access to my treasured wine glasses, decanters & accessories!
While we were living in ‘limbo-land’, I made sure our precious wines have a nice place to call home – a Haier 40-bottle capacity wine fridge. Now, as we plan the move into the ‘new’ flat, I’m contemplating on how I should be storing my wines at home.
At first, I thought of buying a much bigger wine fridge, so I could store more wines. But the cost is somewhat prohibitive, especially those dual-zone ones. Now, I’m thinking of adding a smaller (perhaps 24-bottle capacity) wine fridge to supplement my existing 40-bottler.
This is how I see it work:
– The 40-bottler will be the work-horse, i.e. wines I purchase to drink within the next 1 year will go into this fridge, which will sit in a prominent position in our dine-in kitchen. The door to this fridge will be opened frequently, while contents will be turned-over reasonably quickly.
– The 24-bottler will be the faux-cellar, i.e. wines I intend to hold for bottle-aging, whether for short-term (1-3 years) or longer. This fridge will sit in the back of my store-room, seeing light infrequently, only for more precious cargo to be kept or for ready-to-open bottles to be transferred to the 40-bottler.
You see, there are 4 important factors to storing wines properly: temperature, humidity, light & movement/vibration.
Whilst a wine fridge provides reasonably-stable temperature & humidity, a frequently opened fridge door can possibly cause undesirable temperature fluctuations & vibrations. Also, a wine fridge is often used as part of an overall display by its owners, which means there can be much foot traffic around it, bringing about vibration, not to mention guests who’d feel free to open & examine the contents. Where the wines are “drink now” prepositions, the above do not constitute problems. However, if there are wines desired for longer term cellaring, one should consider having the wine fridge tucked away, and seldom touched. Thus my plan for 2 fridges.
What are your thoughts?
How do you store wines at home? Or, do you have them professionally stored?
