STORING AND SERVING WINE

STORING WINE

Do you have to worry about how and where to store wine? Not really. More than 95 percent of wine is ready to drink straight from the shelf and most is actually consumed within 24 hours of purchase. If you do not have a cellar — and most people do not — then there really is no need to store wine. However, if you want to keep a few bottles for convenience, common sense will tell you to place it somewhere relatively cool and dark. On the other hand, if you are determined to built up a cellar of wine (and for the enthusiast, there is nothing more enjoyable), then there are some very important factors to consider, principally temperature and light.

TEMPERATURE

While 52°F (11°C) is supposed to be the perfect storage temperature for wine, anything between 40°F and 65°F (5°C and 18°C) will in fact suffice for most styles of wines, providing there is no great temperature variation over a relatively short period of time. Higher temperatures increase the rate of oxidation in a wine, therefore a bottle of wine stored at 65°F (18°C) will gradually get “older” than the same wine stored at 52°F (11°C). However, a constant 59°F (15°C) is far kinder to a wine than erratic temperatures that often hit 52°F (11°C), but fluctuate between 40°F and 65°F (5°C and 18°C) from one day to the next. Such rapid changes in temperature cause the cork to shrink and expand, which can loosen the closure’s grip on the inner surface of the bottle’s neck, rendering the wine liable to oxidation through exposure to the air.

LIGHT

All wines are affected negatively by the ultraviolet end of the light spectrum, but some of the harmful photo-chemical effects this causes can be reversed by cellaring a light-affected wine in darkness for a few months. Brown or dead-leaf colored wine bottles offer more natural protection from ultraviolet light than those that are made of traditional green glass. But dark green is better than light green, whereas blue and clear are the most vulnerable (which is why Roederer Cristal is wrapped in protective yellow cellophane).

While it is perfectly okay to buy a wine for everyday drinking (or even for keeping a few months) off a well-lit supermarket shelf, if you want to keep a wine much longer, you should avoid any bottles displayed in sunlight or under artificial lighting. Ask instead for bottles of the same wine that are still in their cartons in the storeroom.

OTHER FACTORS

A certain humidity (between 60 and 70 percent) is essential to keep the cork moist and flexible, thereby avoiding oxidation. This is one reason why long-term storage in a domestic refrigerator should be avoided — the refrigeration process dehumidifies. Several days in a refrigerator is okay, but much longer than this, and the cork will start to dry out. Wines should also be stored under vibration-free conditions, but this only becomes a significant factor over a long period for sparkling wines and mature wines with sediment.

The position in which a wine bottle is stored is also extremely important. Most wines should be stacked on their sides to keep their corks moist, and therefore fully swollen and airtight. Exceptions to this rule are sparkling wines and any wine that has been sealed with a screwtop lid. Champagne and any other sparkling wine may be safely stored in an upright position because the carbonic gas (CO²) trapped in the space between the top of the wine and the base of the cork provides more-than-sufficient humidity to keep a sparkling-wine cork moist and swollen. Screwtop lids require no moistening, of course.

SERVING WINE

Traditionally, white wines have been served chilled and red wines at room temperature, or chambré. At higher temperatures, the odorous compounds found in all wines are more volatile, so the practice of serving full-bodied red wines chambré has the effect of releasing more aromatics into the bouquet.

One major effect of chilling wine is that more carbonic gas is retained at lower temperatures. This enhances the crispness and freshness and tends to liven the impression of fruit on the palate. It is thus vital to serve a sparkling wine sufficiently chilled, since this keeps it bubbling longer. However, the widespread use of refrigerators and central heating means that white wines are all too frequently served too cold, and red wines too warm.

Controversy surrounds the subject of the temperature at which wines are served. Over-chilling wine kills its flavor and aroma as well as making the cork difficult to remove because the wax on a cork adheres to the bottle. Over-warm wine, on the other hand, is bland to taste. The rough guide below is more than you need to know. I prefer not to complicate life with specific temperatures and simply think in terms of “putting a chill on” white or rosé wines and “taking the chill off” red wines.

RAPID CHILLING AND INSTANT CHAMBRÉ

It is fine to chill wine in a refrigerator for a couple of hours, but not for much longer because the cork may stick. Unlike the cumulative effect of wide temperature variations, 10 or 15 minutes in the deep-freeze has never done a wine any harm. The belief that this practice “burns” a wine is unfounded; the cold creeps evenly into the bottle. The rapid-chill sheaths that can be kept in the freezer and slid over a bottle when needed are a great innovation.

Unlike cooling, warming a wine by direct heat is not an even process; whether standing a bottle by an open fire or putting it under a hot faucet, some of the wine gets too hot, leaving the rest too cold. The best way of “taking the chill off” is 60 to 90 seconds in a microwave on medium power.

DECANTING

With increasing age, many wines — especially red wines — throw a natural deposit of tannins and coloring pigments that collect in the base of the bottle. Both red and white wines, particularly white, can also shed a crystalline deposit due to a precipitation of tartrates. Although all these deposits are harmless, their appearance is distracting and decanting will be necessary to remove them.

Preparing the bottle and pouring the wine

Several hours prior to decanting, move the bottle into an upright position. So doing allows the sediment lying along the side of the bottle to fall to the bottom. Cut away the top quarter-inch so of the foil capsule. This could well reveal a penicillin growth or, if the wine is an old vintage, a fine black deposit, neither of which will have had contact with the wine, but to avoid any unintentional contamination when removing the cork it is wise to wipe the lip of the bottle neck and the top of the cork with a clean, damp cloth. Insert a corkscrew and gently withdraw the cork. Place a clean finger inside the top of the bottle and carefully remove any pieces of cork or any tartrate crystals adhering to the inside of the neck, then wipe the lip of the bottle neck with a clean, dry cloth.

Lift the bottle slowly in one hand and the decanter in the other and bring them together over a light source, such as a candle or torch, which will reveal any sediment as the wine is poured. Aim to pour the wine in a slow, steady flow so that the bottle does not jerk and wine does not “gulp for air.” Such mishaps will disturb the sediment, spreading it through a greater volume of liquid.

Filtering dregs

Personally, I flout tradition by pouring cloudy dregs through a finegrade coffee filter paper. I always attempt to decant the maximum volume, thereby filtering the minimum, and I have never been able to tell the difference between pure-decanted wine and that augmented by a small volume of filtered wine. In fact, none of my friends and colleagues who have doubted my assertion have been able to score higher than 50 percent in blind tastings.

ALLOWING WINE TO BREATHE

As soon as you open a bottle of wine, it will be “breathing” (exposed to the air). Wine “feeds” on the small amount of air trapped inside the bottle between the wine and the cork, and on the oxygen naturally absorbed by the wine itself. It is during this slow oxidation that various elements and compounds are formed or changed in a complex chemical process known as maturation. Allowing a wine to breathe is, in effect, creating a rapid, but less sophisticated, maturation. This artificial aging may be beneficial to certain still wines for several reasons, only some of which are known. The only generalization that tends to hold true is that breathing is likely to improve young, full-bodied, tannic red wines.

OPENING A BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE

• Remove the foil from the bulbous top end of the neck. Quite often there is a little foil tail sticking out, which you merely pull. Failing this, you may have to look for the circular imprint of the end of the wire cage, which will have been twisted, folded upward, and pressed into the neck. When you find this, simply pull it outwards—this will rip the foil, enabling you to remove a section from just below the level of the wire cage.

• Holding the bottle upright at an angle, keep one hand firmly on the cork to make sure it will not surprise you by shooting out, untwist the wire with the other hand, and loosen the bottom of the wire cage so that there is a good space all round. A good tip is not to remove the wire cage, not only because that is when most bottles fire their corks unexpectedly, but also because it acts as a good grip, which you need when a Champagne cork is stuck tight.

• Transfer your grip on the cork to the other hand, which should completely enclose the cork and cage, and, holding the base of the bottle with your other hand, twist both ends in opposite directions. As soon as you feel pressure forcing the cork out try to hold it in, but continue the twisting operation until, almost reluctantly, you release the cork from the bottle. The mark of a professional is that the cork comes out with a sigh, not a bang.

By Tom Stevenson in "The Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia", Dorling Kindersley, fourth edition, 2005, London/New York, excerpts p. 46-47. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

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