1. If the conditions aren’t right, the wine will rot.  There’s nothing worse than opening a bottle after years of storage, only to discover that instead of aging gracefully, it’s turned to vinegar.  Keep the temperature of your wine cellar, wine refrigerator, wine closet, or wine cabinet between 50 and 65 degrees F for red wine and 45 to 60 degrees for white wine.

2. Here’s a nifty trick: since heat rises, and white wines need cooler conditions than reds do, keep white wines close to the floor and red wines closer to the ceiling.

3. Maintain a relative humidity between 50 and 70%.  Click here for our discussion on the importance of the right humidity for wine aging.

4. Keep bottles out of the light as much as possible.  When you do need to flip the switch to read the labels, make sure you’re using incandescent, not florescent—the extra UV light from florescent bulbs can penetrate the glass and interfere with the wine’s aging process.

5. Store bottles on their sides to keep the cork moist (a too-dry cork can shrink or even crack, letting in too much air and ruining the wine).

6. Use racks specifically designed for wine storage.  Certain types of woods and treatments can impart undesirable tastes to the bottles or can not rot in the damp, cool climate of your wine cellar.

7. Since you want to protect your wines from temperature fluctuations, and the areas nearest the door of your wine cellar are most vulnerable to temperature and humidity shifts, keep the younger wines that you plan to drink soon near the door, and the investment bottles that you want to age in the back corners.

8. Protect your wines from vibration.  Put your wine cellar in an appropriate place (a professional can help you find one), and avoid picking up the bottles.  Hang wine tags on the necks of your stored sideways bottles and write the label information on them.  This way, you can browse through your collection without disturbing the bottles.

9. The best way to ensure your collection is organized is to keep a regularly updated database of what’s currently in your cellar.  You can use a book or even a computer spreadsheet.  There is also some nifty software built for managing wine collections. Your records should note when you bought the wine, its name, region, producer, vineyard name, price paid, estimated value and future value, and leave space for tasting notes—the most important part!—for when you finally drink it.

You love wine.  You spend a lot of time drinking it, thinking about it, and buying it.  You’d love to start a real collection rather than stashing the bottle haphazardly on a rack in your kitchen, but you live in a small loft apartment.  There’s hardly enough room for your stuff, let alone enough empty space for a wine cellar or even a wine refrigerator.  Your dreams of a great wine collection have been dashed against the rocks of your cramped reality.  Right?  Wrong.

A lack of space doesn’t make collecting wine impossible.  You just have to get creative.  Many reputable wine refrigerator manufacturers also make small wine cabinets that are perfect for the collector with big dreams and small spaces.  These wine cabinets are just like their full-sized counterparts: they are outfitted with high-tech humidity and temperature controls designed for wine storage.  Storing your wine in the proper environment is what makes it age well.  The right climate will provide a cool, moist place for your bottles, letting the reactions between the chemicals in the wine, which give properly aged wine its rich, nuanced flavor, a chance to happen.  Wine cabinets keep these same chemicals from being adversely affected by light, humidity fluctuations, and vibrations, thus protecting your investment and helping ensure that when you finally open that bottle of Cabernet, it will have been worth the wait.

There are a variety of different wine cabinet sizes out there, each one perfect for a unique storage situation.  There are wine cabinets out there that hold 200 bottles or less.  For sincerely limited storage space, there are even wine cabinets that can fit under the counter in your home or restaurant—they’re only about 30 inches high, and they hold 30 bottles.  Avanti makes several wine refrigerators with a compact design that can be freestanding or be easily installed under a counter.  They have a sleek, modern look and digital controls that allow you to adjust the conditions inside the cabinet with the touch of a button.

Another option for the space-challenged is a wine credenza.  A credenza is a long, low cabinet that is usually seen in a dining room.  Some companies make credenzas in luxurious woods with beautiful detailing—you can place them alongside a wall in your dining room and they are both a practical and beautiful way to show off your collection.  Since the credenza performs double duty, it is a great way to save space.  The top of the credenza can be used as a sideboard for serving food, as a bar area, or as a place to display your fine china or other kitchenware.  Vinotheque makes some of the most functional and aesthetically pleasing wine credenzas out there.

Moral of the story: don’t be deterred from collection because you don’t have the space.  Think outside the cellar and check out some of the great solutions for wine storage in small spaces that are out there.

We’ve all been there.  Its starts something like this: a hot night, a white dress, a bottle of great red.  And it ends with a big red stain and an unhappy guest.  But don’t cry over spilled wine!  Here are a few tricks that will help you remove the stain and get your night back on track.  They are all tried-and-true methods that use common household items.

Method 1: The Salt

• As soon as you can, dump a generous amount of salt (large-grained salt like Kosher salt works best) all over the stain.  Let it sit for several hours or overnight.  Vacuum up the salt (and a lot, or even all, of the stain).
• Check the washing instructions, and machine wash if applicable.  Use COOL water to avoid setting the stain, and air-dry so that if some of the stain remains, you don’t set it with the heat from the dryer and can re-wash.
• If you can’t machine wash, hand wash in cool water, and air dry.

Method 2: The Science Experiment

• As quickly as you can, blot the stain with paper towels to soak up as much excess moisture as you can.  Do NOT scrub or rub the stain, as this can cause it to set further.
• If the stain is on something like a garment or a comforter (something with a back that the stain can leak through to), place a washcloth or something similar behind the stained fabric to prevent the stain from spreading.
• In a small bowl, combine one teaspoon laundry soap, dish soap, or laundry pretreatment with one cup hydrogen peroxide.
• Check the washing instructions, and machine wash if applicable.  Use COOL water to avoid setting the stain, and air-dry so that if some of the stain remains, you don’t set it with the heat from the dryer and can re-wash.
• If you can’t machine wash, hand wash in cool water, and air dry.

Method 3: The Club Soda

• This is a great method to use for carpet stains because the carbonation in the club soda helps pull the stain up and out of the fibers.  Pour the club soda on the stain and blot the carpet to remove the wine.  Keep pouring and blotting until the stain is removed.
• If you’re using this method on something other than carpet, then follow the washing instructions.

Method 4: The White Wine

• White wine will neutralize red wine and stop the stain from spreading.  Pour white wine on the stain and then as soon as you can, wash the stained item according to its washing instructions.
• This is a great method to use at a party when you or a guest is wearing something you can’t remove and wash right away, because with the stain neutralized, you can wait until you get home to worry about getting it out.  Plus, white wine is usually readily available at parties.

Tip: The key to removing any stain successfully is to take care of the problem as soon as possible.  The longer you wait, the more chance the stain has to set.

This week, we’ve been highlighting must-have smartphone apps for wine lovers.  We’ve talked about apps for the iPhone and Blackberry, so this time, let’s turn our attention to a few great wine-friendly apps for the Android.

Wine by the Bar: This app’s motto is “Sip, Scan, Share,” and it allows you to do just that with your favorite wines.  Android’s scanning feature is especially helpful when it comes to wine, allowing you to look up a bottle, no matter your location, with the click of a button.  You can add and review wines, and through Twitter, share them with your fellow wine lovers.  Check it out here.

Pair It!: This great app for iPhone is now available for Android!  As we’ve discussed many times on this blog, creating the perfect food and wine pairing is no easy task.  You can enter either the food you’re making or the wine you plan to drink into the app, and it will give you some ideas for perfect combinations.  Or, you can “swirl” your Android to see a random pairing.  Pair It! really takes care to consider all of a wine’s subtle details when making its suggestions, so we trust its opinion.  Get it at here.

Swirl:  This is the mobile counterpart to the website snooth.com, a place to read about, review, and buy great wines.  It contains a catalog of over 100,000 wines, allows you to search by varietal, price, and other factors, and directs you to local stores that sell the wine you want.  Learn more here.

Sure, you’ve heard that wine should always be stored on its side.  But grocery stores and even many wine shops display their bottles upright.  The bottle is meant to stand that way for a reason, right?  Wrong.  Storing wine in the vertical position, especially if you’re trying to age it, is a big mistake that can ruin your wine.

Here’s why: your wine shares a fickle friendship with oxygen.  Oxygen reacts with the chemicals in your wine to change its flavor compounds.  In other words, without oxygen, wine could not age.  But oxygen also reacts with the alcohol in wine to form acetic acid, or vinegar.  Exposure to too much oxygen will ruin a bottle of wine.

So how do you limit the amount of oxygen that comes in contact with the wine?  This is where the cork comes in.  An old but ingenious solution to the oxygen problem, a cork can expand and contract as its environment changes.  Storing a bottle of wine upright keeps the cork high and dry, away from the wine.  It can dry out, and when it dries, it shrinks, leaving room for air to enter the bottle and let oxygen react with the wine.

When you store a bottle of wine on its side, the liquid keeps the cork moist.  The cork keeps its size (and can even expand if needed, for instance, if a warm environment causes the glass bottle to expand), and so maintains a tight seal against the outside air.  The only air that gets in is through the small pores in the cork–the perfect amount to age the wine well.

The best way to store wine on its side is in a wine rack specifically designed for the purpose.  Vintage Cellars offers a variety of beautiful and functional wine racks.  Check them out here.

So everyone knows that you’re supposed to serve white and sparkling wine chilled.  But red is supposed to be served at room temperature, right?  Wrong.  Red wine tastes best served at a temperature between 55º and 65º.  The average room temperature is 70°: great for lounging around without your jacket, bad for red wine.

But what’s the big deal?  Why is that slight chill on the  bottle of red important?  Serving red wine at the ideal temperature allows the flavors to come through.  The tannins and structure of the wine are more fully expressed, and subtle aromas are enhanced.  When wine is served too warm, the alcohol becomes the central characteristic, overpowering the more enjoyable flavors and making even a good wine taste cheap.

So how do you get your wine to this perfect temperature?  You can certainly stick the bottle in your refrigerator for about an hour (for lighter reds like Pinot Noir), 45 minutes (medium-bodied reds like Chianti) or 30 minutes (the big powerhouses like a bold Cabernet Sauvignon).  However, this is a very imprecise science–your refrigerator is so much colder than the ideal temperature that it’s very difficult to get the temperature right.  At the very best, the wine will be unevenly chilled, with the bottle much colder than the liquid inside.  If it’s within your budget, the best option is a wine refrigerator with red-chilling capabilities.

One option that won’t break the bank is this 30-bottle refrigerator by Avanti.  Streamlined, it’s great for small spaces, and it comes equipped with a digital touch-control for temperature, allowing you to tailor the cooling environment for a specific wine.

But the ideal system is something like this EuroCave Performance Elite (pictured).  It has three temperature compartments: one for aging (53-57°F), one for chilling white and sparkling wine for service (40-44°F), and one for chilling red wine to the perfect serving temperature (62-66°F).  This kind of specialized refrigerator allows you to always have a perfectly chilled bottle right on hand.

If you’re someone who invests in your wine collection and takes pride in serving your carefully chosen and aged bottles, you don’t want to overlook service.  Chilling a perfectly aged red to the ideal serving temperature does justice to your collection.

For the wine consumer, the Great Cork Debate is nothing if not confusing.  ”Experts” sound off about the pros of one and cons of the other, often in complete contradiction with other “experts”.   It’s easy to find yourself bewildered to immobility in the middle of a wine shop, a natural corked wine in your left hand, a synthetic corked bottle in your right, and a screw cap in front of you.  Headaches like these can drive the most devoted wine enthusiast to consider collecting something else instead…perhaps hard liquor.

As it turns out, the loudest voices in support of synthetic corks and screw caps often belong to those who make their living bottling wine.  And this really isn’t surprising, considering that the wine stopper industry rakes in $4 billion a year, and that synthetic corks and screw caps are considerably cheaper to produce than traditional corks.

And they do have a strong argument for getting rid of traditional corks: cork taint.  Every wine collector has experienced that deep disappointment that comes when a bottle that’s been carefully aging for years opens up smelling like wet cardboard, due to a chemical compound called trichloroanisole (TCA), which occurs naturally in some corks.  Depending on which study you look at, cork taint affects between 3 and 15 percent of bottles.  Those aren’t numbers to be taken lightly, especially when we’re talking about the often-expensive wines meant for aging.

But what these proponents of man-made corks or screw caps usually fail to mention is that there are also significant problems with these cork substitutes.  Here are a few:

• Synthetic corks don’t change with their surroundings. The glass that all wine bottles are made of expands and contracts with small temperature shifts in the environment around it.  Natural cork expands and contracts with the bottle, keeping the seal between wine and air consistently snug.  And environmental consistency is the number one rule of wine aging.  A too-loose synthetic cork can let in too much oxygen, ruining the wine by letting the alcohol turn into acetic acid, or vinegar.  A too-tight cork can be tough to remove from the bottle.  The latter is a common problem with synthetic corks: after about 18 months, they can be too tight to extract without a fight.
• A small amount of oxygen is necessary for aging wine. Without oxygen, most of the natural reactions that occur between the hundreds of chemical compounds in a bottle of wine can’t happen, and the wine can’t develop so-called “aging flavors,” notes that can make a Chardonnay “buttery” or a Cab taste of truffles.  Screwcaps and synthetic corks prevent oxygen from getting to the wine.  Sure, this prevents over-oxidation, but so does drinking wine the day it’s bought.  In short, a synthetic-corked bottle doesn’t really “age”–it’s just taking up space in the cellar.
• Screw caps can trap unsavory gases inside the bottle, ruining the wine’s aroma. Some of the reactions that occur within an aging wine result in sulfury gases.  These are allowed to dissapate through a natural cork and leave the wine, but are trapped by screw caps, resulting in a rotten-egg smell in the final product.
• Synthetic corks and screw caps could leech chemicals into the wine. We don’t yet know how the compounds that make up plastics interact with the compounds in wine, but there are many studies that indicate the harmful effects the ingestion of plastics can have on the human body.
• For once, it turns out that the old way of doing things was more environmentally friendly. Cork is taken from
  

  Recently harvested cork oaks

  cork trees in sheets once every ten years.  This process doesn’t harm the tree, and in fact, the cork grows back, making it a renewable resource.  A typical cork oak can continue producing for 200 years.  Cork orchards, with cover huge swaths of land in Span, Algeria, Morocco, Italy, Tunisia, France, and Portugal, provide an environment for flora and fauna, including endangered species like the Iberian lynx, Barbary deer, and the Imperial Iberian eagle.  Farming the cork provides jobs for over 100,000 people.  The cork trees also trap vast amounts of carbon dioxide, lessening pollution.  Almost 70% of the product from these cork farms goes directly to the wine stopper industry.  Without it, the orchards and the protection they provide for people, animals, and the environment, would disappear.

• Steps are being taken to lessen the occurence of cork taint in natural-corked bottles. Major manufacturers have invested millions in recent years to screening their cork more carefully and upgrading their production processes.  As a result, cork taint rates have been dropping.

Besides all these practical reasons to refuse to move to synthetic corks, there’s a very deep psychological one.  The satisfying “pop” signals that a tradition almost as old as civilization itself is about to begin.  Wine is an organic, breathing substance.  It is its nature to change over time, and to change not in a formulaic way, but in a way influenced by its environment and the skill of those in charge of it.  To lock it behind machine-produced plastic is to lessen the artistry of wine aging.

I had a long conversation with a potential client who wanted to explore a new avenue to store his wine.  He was a self-admitted, “not really into wine guy” but his father had given him 20 cases, some Bordeaux, Burgundy, California Cabs and Champagne.  Over the past 2 years, the wine has taken up precious space in the garage.  Immediately, I turned the conversation into a 911 phone call from those 20 cases.  Anywhere but the garage!  There are several problems with storing wine in the garage.  First, garage temperatures are in constant fluctuation and in many cases mirror the weather conditions.  Hot summer days followed by cool evenings can cause a temperature change of 20 degrees or greater.  Excessive temperature fluctuation will cause the wine to expand and contract, which will draw in air through the cork and cause oxidation.  The second, garage temperatures often reach extreme high or low temperatures depending on geographical location.  A storage area over 75 degrees is going to cause the wine to slowly bake and below 40 degrees can make the wine become dormant (stopping the aging process). 

A fully constructed, insulated, climate controlled wine room may not be in your future.  You may not need more then a wine rack from your local import store, however, the proper preservation of a good bottle of wine is key.  If you are “newbie” to wine collecting and you may aspire to become a full blown collector one day, start small.  Purchase a wine cabinet or wine refrigerator to protect that next shipment from the wine club.  I just received 6 bottles of Chateau Guiraud Sauternes 2005, believe me, I can’t wait to see what it becomes years down the road (properly stored).