.18.
o When stored correctly, white wines can keep well for up to two years. Full
bodied reds will age well for ten years and dessert wines will age well for
up to twenty years.
o When you buy a bottle of wine, you should transfer it to a suitable storage
location immediately (if you are not going to store it in your Wine Cooler).
o Cheaper bottles of wine will not age as well as more expensive ones.
o To make the most of the bouquet and taste of your wine, never fill more
than half a glass at a time. It will also help if the shape of your wine glass
is appropriate for your wine. The size and shape of your wine glass’s bowl
will determine the intensity and complexity of the bouquet. The stem
should be long enough to allow you to avoid hand contact with the
bowl of the glass and should be tulip-shaped or tapered at the top.
Wine Storage Problems
Corking-
a tiny percentage of bottled wine (about 1%) will suffer from this.
The cork reacts with the wine and gives it a musty, unpleasant taste. It is the
most common wine storage problem and is caused by harmless bacteria
growing on the cork. As unfortunate as this is, there is nothing to do but to
discard all of the wine in the affected bottle. This is not to be confused with
small fragments of cork floating in the wine itself, which will not impair the
flavour.
Oxidisation-
when wine has been opened and left for longer than a day;
it tends to lose its aroma and colour, giving an overall flat taste. The only
way to avoid this, it to either drink the wine on the same day it was opened
or to use a vacuum device specially designed for removing oxygen from
opened wine bottles. If you use such a device, the wine should still be
consumed shortly afterwards.
Ullage-
this is loss of wine from the bottle by evaporation or leakage. Signs
of ullage include wine seeping around the cork, a protruding cork or a
stained label. It can happen if the bottle has been allowed to get too
warm. The wine may still be drinkable, if the leakage was recent; however,
you should be aware that if the wine cools down again, contraction
can cause more air to be sucked into the bottle and result in further
deterioration.
Slight effervescence in still wine-
this isn’t really a problem with the way
the wine has been stored, but as a result of incomplete malolactic
fermentation before the wine was bottled. A good way to get rid of the
effervescence is to let the wine breathe. Alternatively you can use a bottle
vacuum device, after about five minutes the effervescence will vanish.
Sediment-
this is not normally a problem, however both red and white wines
can produce sediment after a number of months in a bottle. The sediment
