Wine News: Here's how to store your wine

"Most of us won't ever buy the $35,000 GE Monogram Wine Vault, but we do want to know how to properly store the few bottles we keep on hand. So the Pioneer Press asked wine connoisseurs John Brecher and Dorothy Gaiter of the Wall St. Journal's weekly Tastings wine column for their wine storage recommendations for the rest of us.

The husband-and-wife oenophile wrote back with these tips for Pioneer Press readers:

"Anyone who has an extensive collection of fine bottles of wine needs to invest in good storage. When we moved to Miami in 1984, we looked for a house with a room that could be turned into a wine room. We found an Old Spanish house in Coral Gables with a maid's room with its own air conditioning and then had a carpenter build racks for 990 bottles. This was expensive, but it kept the bottles beautifully. Just as important, it made the wine room itself a destination for us. When you have a collection, much of the fun is looking at the bottles and imagining what they taste like, choosing the perfect bottle for dinner among all of your treasures, and remembering when and where you bought each bottle.

"The problem is that ordinary people who hear stories like this, and about the GE product, then figure that all wine must be kept in pristine conditions, know they don't have pristine conditions — and then don't keep a single bottle in the house for fear of harming the wine. This is a shame."

Full article here.

October 22, 2006

Wine News: Here's how to store your wine