Cleaning Tip: How To Store Wine

A cleaning tip from Stylelist Home's cleaning and organizing experts Stacey Platt and Sarah Hayon of DwellWell NYC.

Nigel Cart, former CEO of Oriel Wines, offers the following advice to ensure proper preservation of wine:

• Store wine away from direct light, which can damage or prematurely age your wine. Ultraviolet light can even penetrate dark-colored glass and impart unpleasant aromas.
• Optimum long-term storage temperature is 50-55 degrees Fahrenheit, and sudden dramatic changes in temperature should be avoided. That said, wine will likely last for a year or two between 40 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit, as long as changes in temperature are gradual rather than sudden.
• Humidity should be between 50 and 80 percent so that the cork doesn't dry out and crumble or lose its seal.
• Store wine on its side rather than upright to keep the cork damp.
• Wine should be stored in a calm place, as excessive vibration can disturb the sediment and damage the wine.
• Face the label upward so that you don't disturb the bottle to check what it is.
• Store all wine accessibly so that you're not constantly moving it to get to the bottle you want to drink.

If your most special wine will be opened in a year or two, then you certainly don't need a wine refrigerator. However, if you're saving a special case of wine from the year of your marriage or your child's birth for a big celebration a couple of decades later, then a wine refrigerator is a worthy investment. You should be able to go online and find a decent one to store two or three cases of wine for $400 to $600. Don't worry about the state of your labels, which could potentially rot even in the most antiseptic wine refrigerator. Just be sure to keep a record of what you have on each shelf in case the labels fall off the bottles.

Find more cleaning and organizing tips in What's A Disorganized Person To Do?