Although we have heard a lot of stories about how the taste of wine improve over age, storing wine just about anywhere for many years will not really improve the taste of your wine. In fact, many experts believe that storing wine in ordinary wine cabinets will not really do your wine any good at all. Wines need to age in a special place in order for it to taste good that is why all wine producers have their own specially made cellars where they age their wine for a certain period of time. They don’t just store their wines in wine cabinets and pray that the wine will taste just as good as it should.
Keeping Bottled Wine
Most bottled wines are not really meant to be kept for a long, long time. Cheaper bottles of wine are meant to be consumed within a short period of time. The quality of cheap wines deteriorates faster compared to its more expensive counterpart. How long should you keep your wine in your wine cabinet? According to experts, keeping your white wine in a wine cabinet for more than two years from its vintage date will alter the taste of the white wine. In fact, many types of white wines become stale when stored inside the wine cabinet for a long time. On the other hand, red wines have longer staying power compared to white wine. You can keep the red wine in your wine cabinet for up to three years from its vintage date. Just make sure that you do not expose your red wine to direct sunlight and erratic changes in the temperature because this can spoil the taste of the wine.
Is It Possible To Store Your Wine In The Wine Cabinet For A Longer Period Of Time?
Yes, it is possible to prolong the life of your wine by storing it in a dark place with controlled temperature. Note that the light of the sun can affect the condition of the wine so it is very important to store your wine in a place which is hidden from the sun. On the other hand, unstable temperature will hasten the spoiling of the wine so if you really want to store your wine for a few years before drinking it, it would be best for you to get a wine cabinet that is suitable for that purpose. To make sure that your wine is protected from the light of the sun, place your wine cabinet in your basement where the light of the sun could not reach it.
Wine Cabinets: How To Store Your Wine To Last A Long Time
Wine Food Pairing: How To Choose The Best Wine To Go With Vegetarian Diet
Being a vegetarian is a good thing. According to experts, eating plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables is very good to your body. In fact, many studies show that a vegetarian diet can prevent certain types of cancer. To complete your vegetarian diet, you should choose the right type of wine to go with your dishes. Wine food pairing is very important to help you enjoy your meals to the fullest. You don’t really have to be a chef to know about wine food pairing. A lot of people who do not have any formal training in preparing food learn wine food pairing on their own so do not worry about it. To give you some ideas about wine food pairing, here are some pointers for you.
Matching The Taste Of Your Food With Your Wine
Your taste in food affects the way to do wine food paring. If you like strongly flavored dishes choose some robust red wines to go with it. Spicy dishes go well with sweet red wine. Syrah or cabernet sauvignon goes well with dishes that contain plenty of garlic and other strong spices while a sangiovese will enhance the taste of your tomato-based dishes. If you cannot find any of these red wines to go with your strongly flavored dishes, other types of red wines will do just fine. There are actually plenty of red wines that you can choose from when doing wine food pairing. The limits here is your creativity and your ingenuity so go ahead and experiment with your food and your wine. According to experts, if you want to know which red wine goes well with your food, sample as many red wines as you can and compare their taste. Since red wine is good for your health, you need not worry about drinking a couple of glasses per day.
While red wine goes well with food that are strongly flavored, white wine are good with food that have more subtle taste. White wines are very easy on the taste buds and are very good when paired with lighter meals. Furthermore, there are plenty of white wines flavors that you can choose from such as apple, citrus, lemon, pear, lime, pineapple, grapefruit, melon, butter, herb, floral and others. Most of these flavors go well with light meals so you will not really have a hard time matching the taste of your food and your wine.
Wine Storage: Which Wines can I keep?
In spite of all of those wonderful old movies that show great cellars filled with every imaginable vintage of wine, not all styles lend themselves well to wine storage. In fact, if you are planning to begin a wine cellar or any type of wine storage, it is good to check with your wine dealer to make sure just how long that favorite bottle will last before it starts to go bad.
Basic Wine Storage Information:
The reason that so many wine cellars are found in the basement is two fold: first, too much air can spoil a wine as fast as too much heat. The coolest places around are also those where too much air is not a problem—the basement. So, if you can, start storing your favorite bottles where the spiders and mice tend to live and the children are afraid to visit, that dusky and dank basement that you have been meaning to finish.
Additional benefits to using that basement for your wine storage facility include a greater chance that the corks on your wine will not crack due to getting dried out and there usually is not an excess of light down there. Both of these can dramatically shorten wine storage time, so it is important to be aware of not only air and temperature, but also moisture and light.
Have you ever wondered why wine storage racks are horizontal rather than vertical? Did you think that it was a space-thing? Well, the truth is that when you store your bottle horizontally rather than vertically, the corks remain moist from the enclosed wine, which also helps prevent cracking and drying.
Wine Storage and Styles:
If the wine is under ten dollars, then do not try to store it: it will not keep past six months, because it was not bottled to do so. Other, more expensive wines can be stored for a period of time, but there is a difference between whites and reds. Wine storage time frames for white wines are generally shorter than those for reds; in fact, it is recommended that Reislings and Chardonnays be consumed within five years for optimum taste.
The only red wines that are comparable in wine storage time frame to the whites are those that cost between twelve and twenty-five dollars or all of the Syrahs and Shiraz varieties. Otherwise, red wine storage can be in excess of five years and sometimes more than fifteen. So, it is always a good idea to check with your wine dealer when you are going to purchase a good bottle of wine, then mark it on the calendar, because there can be no better way to celebrate a college graduation than with a wine purchased on the first day of school.
The Value Of Wine Storage Racks
Wine is a very popular beverage especially in Europe where it is consumed day and night. Americans also like wine but it s usually reserved for evenings and special occasions. Most of the people who like wine, keep some in store at their homes in case they have guests or need to entertain.
The Use of Having Wine Storage Racks
Wine is usually stored on its side, especially if it is still unopened. You will need wine storage racks to store several bottles of wine. Wine storage racks can be any size, depending on your preference and need. If you usually store a lot of wine bottles, you can have a rack for entertaining in your kitchen and bigger wine storage racks in your cellar where you could keep several bottles of wine.
Wine storage racks are very useful in storing bottles of wine because you can organize them according to date and region. Organization is needed when you deal with a large number of wine bottles. There are several aspects with which you can store your bottles of wine like the type of grapes used or the region from which the wine was made in or the date of its production.
The larger wine storage racks are usually made from wood. Metal is also an option for larger racks, it all depends on your needs and preference although, most professional wine cellars do use wooden wine storage racks. The smaller wine rack you might have in your kitchen could also be made from wood or metal.
The wine storage racks usually hold tilted bottles so they are usually thicker at the sides. They would appear like bookshelves but may have small wooden slots where the bottles should go. Other wine storage racks allow you to stack up the wine in diamond shaped receptacles one over the other. Yet another design for wine storage racks is wooden shelves with small holes big enough for the neck of the bottle to go through. The bottles are laid down with their bottoms tilted upwards and their necks in the holes.
Whatever design you might want for your wine storage racks keep in mind the durability of the rack to ensure it does not cave due to the pressure of several bottles of wine. Do not overload the rack or you might risk losing several hundreds of dollars worth of wine. It is also best to keep the rack away from sunlight and hot or warm places to keep the wines’ temperature low.
What Beginners Need To Know About The Different Types Of Wine
Wines have been very popular throughout the ages. Over the years, different types of wines have been developed in different parts of the world. Some of the most popular types of wines are the red wine, the white wine, the table wine, the sparkling wine and the cooking wine. These types of wines also have sub type under them. However, since these things are too many to mention and will just confuse beginners; let us just start by discussing the four most popular types of wines.
The Red Wine And The White Wine
When it comes to popular types of wines, the red wine and the wine white always top the ranking. Many people all over the world prefer to drink these types of wine after dinner. In most European countries, drinking of red wine and white is very common. In fact, many Europeans would not consider their dinner as complete without a glass of wine.
What determines the color of the wine? The presence or the absence of the skin of the grapes determines the color of the wine. White wine is produced by removing the skin of the grapes before extracting the juice. On the other hand, red wine is produced by letting the red skin of the grapes get into contact with the juice during the fermentation process. Since the heavy flavor of grapes is concentrated on its skin, red wine usually taste a bit stronger compared to white wine. White wine usually has light taste thus it goes well with subtly flavored dishes and light meals while red wine is best suited for strong flavored meals.
The Sparkling Wine
Another popular type of wine is the sparkling wine. Sparkling wine has a high level of carbon dioxide which is manifested in its fizzy nature. Some wines only have small amount of carbon while others, especially those that have been injected with carbon dioxide during the fermentation process have high carbon content and fizzle really well. Many people refer to the sparkling wine as the champagne style wine. Since this wine fizzle almost like champagne, many people opt to use this type of wine instead of champagne during celebrations.
The Table Wine
The table wine is another type of wine that has become popular over the years. This type of wine has higher alcohol content compared to other types of wine. In the United States, the alcohol content of table wine is just within the 8.5% and the 14% alcohol content but in Europe, table usually have alcohol content of more that 14%.
For those with a sweet tooth; Sweet Red Wine
The colour of wine is not determined by the grape, but by the present or absence of the grape skin during fermentation. Red wine is made from red or black grapes, but its red color comes from a process called maceration, where the skin is left in contact with the juice during fermentation.
Red wines are known for their health benefits and sweet red wines are very popular among new wine drinkers who are seeking a wine as sweet as possible; most new wine drinkers are used to sweet drinks such as fizzy drinks and sweetened coffee and are seeking the same thing in a wine. Sweet red wines are becoming more popular and yet are often quite hard to find, with prices varying from quite cheap to quite expensive. The best option to find one that is sweet and local to you is go to your local wine specialist and ask their advice for what they recommend.
Popular Sweet Red Wine Styles
Popular sweet red wines are the Zinfandel and the Merlot style which are both incredibly sweet and popular in North America. Another popular sweet red wine is port, known as a ‘dessert’ wine and drunk very often in households at Christmas time. Port is higher in alcohol than regular wine and is very sweet, thick and rich.
Many American wineries make very sweet red wines, yet Hungary and Greece to the east are other good sources for sweet reds. Nearly every regional American winery makes some type of sweet red wine, either from Concord grapes or French-American mixtures of grapes.
Some of the best Sweet Red Wines Available
Honeywood Winery Concord Grape – A very sweet red wine, which is incredibly popular, this is a native American grape that is often frowned upon by many wine makers because it is not French. It is quite cheap at around nine dollars.
Beaujolais Villages Nouveau - Around Thanksgiving time this is widely available for around 6 weeks and is very popular with the public and is categorized as sweet and fruity.
Moscato d'Asti - This is a popular sweet red dessert wine which is popular to drink after dinner with different kind of cheeses.
Catawba – This is not the name of a wine, but an ingredient that is used primarily to make sweet red wines that produce a musky lambruco flavor. This is a very popular choice for a sweet red wine ingredient.
Who Needs a Wine Refrigerator?
Remember that time you planned the perfect dinner party, chilled your wine in the refrigerator, but by the time it got to the table it tasted like rancid cardboard? Did you know that the reason for that may well be the temperature fluctuations within the bottle? Because wine is affected by temperature, and chilled wines more than any other, it may be important to you to purchase a wine refrigerator. There are a variety of sizes depending upon your needs and with that variety comes a wide range of prices.
Small Wine Refrigerators:
The small varieties can easily accommodate four to eight bottles of wine and start at about eighty dollars and go up from there depending upon the number of bottles it can store, the type of material it is made from, temperature range and a variety of other possible accoutrements. It is possible to turn one of those little office refrigerators into a small wine refrigerator with a few minor adjustments.
Medium Wine Refrigerators:
As your collection grows, it may become necessary to upgrade your wine refrigerator to something a bit larger. Staring at about $150.00 these wine refrigerators, can hold in excess of twenty-four bottles comfortably and are about the size of those larger dorm-room refrigerators. Potentially, similar adjustments can be made on one of those to create a viable larger wine refrigerator should the need arise.
Large Wine Refrigerators:
Those who are looking for serious wine storage may want to consider a large wine refrigerator. These appliances are about the same size as an average food refrigerator, but are designed to hold wine at a temperature that will help keep the bottles fresh as long as possible. Holding upwards of fifty bottles of wine, these varieties cost in excess of $300.00.
Built-in Wine Refrigerators:
Can you imagine having your wine refrigerator built-in next to your dishwasher? Can you think of anything more convenient? If you are that kind of connoisseur, then you may want to consider talking to your builder about installing a built-in wine refrigerator. These varieties can comfortably house upwards of 37 bottles and cost about the same as a large wine refrigerator.
So, if you are interested in avoiding any future problems with temperature causing your wine to go bad, then consider a wine refrigerator. Even if it means revamping one of those little office styles temporarily, is that better than the embarrassment of sitting down to dinner with friends only to discover that that thirty dollar bottle of Chablis has gone bad due to a temperature issue?