Storing and Serving Wine


 Nowadays not many of us have the luxury of a vast cellar in which to store our wine for decades. It is possible to use the cellar of a local wine merchant for a small fee but if you only have a few dozen bottles then the chances are you will want to keep them at home.

Storing
1. Keep the bottles horizontal
2. Keep away from extreme heat and cold
3. Invest in a simple wine rack
4. Keep the bottles at such an angle so that the wine is always in contact with the cork, to avoid it drying out and flavouring the wine
5. Preferably keep in the dark

Serving
 1. Red wine tends to be served at room temperature and white wine chilled, however increasingly we are moving away from this as a hard and fast rule
2. Don’t over chill white wine or the flavours will be muted
3. Acidic, light, sparking and very sweet wines should be served at no higher than 10°C
4. Semillons, Chardonnay and Alsace wine can be slightly warmer
5. Most reds should be served slightly below room temperature
6. Never heat on a radiator as this will make the wine taste muddy
7. Light reds such as Dolcetto, Loire and Beaujolais can actually be served slightly chilled
8. Red wines do not always require breathing however if they are young will benefit from about half an hours air contact to aid development

Glasses

It is not necessary to go out and spend a fortune on the most expensive glasses on the market in order to get the best of your wine, however here are a few points to remember when choosing glasses to ensure you get the most out of your bottle.

1. Choose clear glass and not coloured to show the wine off to the best effect (plain glass and not cut crystal also helps)
2. Red wines are traditionally served in wider glasses to white which helps to differentiate them at the dinner table but also gives the red wine more service area to breathe
3. Regardless of colour the best glasses have a wide bowl that tapers significantly towards the mouth. This allows for good release of the aromas and channels them up to the nose
4. ‘Think Big’, you can never have a glass that is too big
5. Sparking wines should be served in flutes (tall, thin with straight sides), to preserve the bubbles for as long as possible
6. Fortified wines should be served in smaller, narrower versions of a traditional wine glass

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