You may be asking yourself, I store my wine at Dymon Wine Cellar. They have ideal temperature and humidity control, but what exactly does that mean and why should I care about it when storing wine?
When we consider wine storage, we are trying to ensure that nothing that will negatively affect the wine can get in. The elements that can cause the most damage to our wine are heat, oxygen and light.
Heat is enemy number one for wine. Temperatures greater than 21 degrees Celsius will age a wine more quickly than is usually desirable. If it gets much hotter, your wine may get “cooked,” resulting in flat aromas and flavours. The ideal storage temperature for wines is generally considered to be between 8-18 degrees Celsius. Based on that, you can start to see why simply storing your wine in your fridge at home is not recommended. The temperature we store food at and the temperature at which we should store wine are different! This is why it is best to place your wine in a dedicated space with proper temperatures.
Another reason we don’t want to store wine in our fridge is because of another enemy of wine, oxygen. Fridges are not humid enough to store wine and over time the lack of moisture would dry out the wine bottle’s cork, exposing your wine to air. Minor exposure to oxygen can lead to deeper, more complex flavours that add appeal and overall quality to wines. This is why we decant wines and let them age in ideal conditions. But too much exposure has the opposite effect – it destroys complex flavours, muting aroma, taste and even colour. This is when wine is considered "oxidized." If a wine is stored improperly, the cork will dry out, exposing the wine to air, aging the wine too rapidly and eventually oxidizing it.
Even light can damage wine if you are not careful. Lightstrike occurs when wine is exposed to sunlight and/or fluorescent light. The light reacts with compounds naturally present in wine and can create unpleasant sulphur compounds in the wine. At best, this will dull bright fruit flavours and at worst introduce a series of foul smells such as rotten eggs, cabbage or even sewage.
Dymon Wine Cellar has taken great care to store your wine in ideal conditions. Our cellar is temperature controlled between 8-13 degrees Celsius. We have humidifiers running constantly to create a perfect humid environment for your wine to age. All of our glass windowpanes that face outside have been treated with a film to prevent UV light from penetrating inside the cellar. All our bulbs are LED instead of fluorescent. We take great pride in our storage conditions so you, as a member, can be sure that your wine is being stored in the best possible condition.