Hi, I’m Andrew from OYA Restaurant and Lounge in Washington, D.C. And today we’re discussing tips from a Sommelier.

In this clip, I’ll be discussing with you how to properly store a wine. As you can see, right now, I’m standing in a restaurant’s wine storage room. That’s why it’s a little dark. It’s a little chilly and you can also in the background hear a faint beeping from our air conditioning unit indicating that it’s just a little bit warmer than normal in here.

So, let’s talk about some things that you can do at home on storing wine. Now, most wines that you have at home right now for everyday drinking are not necessarily going to benefit from any long term storage and that really goes for most wines that are on the market today. There are only a very select number of high end wines. They really would benefit for having a cold storage unit in your home whether it be a small refrigerator or a room like this that we have here at the restaurant.

A couple things to keep in mind that you can do at home that will impact the quality of the wine. First, you want to try to store all of your wine horizontally. That’s why many of the wine racks that you can purchase in wine shops and stores happen to be situated so that you can place wine horizontally. Now, the reason that’s important is mainly with wines that have real cork is that you always want to have wining contact with the cork. You don’t want the corks to dry out because if the corks dry out, they can shrink and contract a little bit and air can get in. Too much air can cause the wine to oxidize, that’s why a lot of the wine racks that you find in the stores whether it would be those little wooden wines that you could just flop on your counter, that’s why they design the store wine horizontally.

A note about this little wine racks. Don’t place them on top of your refrigerator. I go into a lot of people’s home and I see them on top of the refrigerator, that’s a bad place to store wine because that area of the kitchen tends to be warm. You also don’t want to have it too close to the stove because heat can be detrimental to your wine. It can cause cooked flavors and you basically ruin your wine. So, don’t store your wine anywhere that’s warm especially about the fridge or somewhere near the kitchen stove.

Some other things to keep in mind, you also want to find a dark place as light can be detrimental to your wine and also, this is the toughest one for people to do in their homes especially those people that live in condominiums or apartments is to try to find a place with the cost and humidity level which would be around 70% is the ideal. So, if you have a basement or a cellar that would be a great place to store wine so that humidity is important to keep the corks from shrinking because again, if they shrink, then you can have some oxidation.

One other note about corks and shrinkage, do not store white wine in your refrigerator and I’m talking about your refrigerator where you store your food because if humidity levels tend to be lower in refrigerators for food and again you have shrinkage of the corks and you could have a ruined bottle of wine. I remember putting a bottle in maybe for two weeks. I thought I was going to drink it and right the next hour but I didn’t and it was ruined within two weeks. And I hadn’t even opened it because the cork shrunk. The humidity level wasn’t high enough and the wine was ruined.

Now, if you do have some bottles that say you have some Chateau Margaux at home that we have here, things that you’ve spent a good deal of money on that do definitely benefit from long term aging. These are the kind of bottles that I would say you need to invest in a wine storage unit. I mean you can build a room like this where you can store a thousand bottles and you can invest in some rack shelving, on air conditioning unit that will keep the room 55 to 57 degrees. This also regulates humidity except when we have the door opening it up a lot and its wants to be about us but it regulates humidity. I mean, it’s the perfect environment.

Now, if you don’t have a home that’s big enough to build one of these rooms, you can invest in a small wine refrigerator. They have special wine refrigerator that regulate the ultimate temperature, let’s say again 55 to 57 and also regulates the humidity. And those can come with a small as I’ve seen them for like 15 bottles all the way up to, I’ve seen units that look like a more of the standard refrigerator that hold 300 bottles.

So, there you have it. How to store wine? Stay tune because in my next clip, we’re going to be talking about how to think outside the glass of Chardonnay.