Small Chest Freezer: The Best Way to Store your Fine Whites and Reds
Ah yes wine, the nectar of the gods, and one of the finest substances on the planet. Well, at least the superb wines. From the ancient Greeks onward, wine has certainly enjoyed fame and notoriety throughout the ages, as has the science of how to store it. Any discussion of chilling or refrigerating wines is compounded by the considerations that you must give the two main wine types, whites and reds.
Red wines generally require far less chilling, but should be kept in a cool and dark atmosphere while being stored. White wines, on the other hand, are at their best when truly chilled, or kept at 8 degrees Celsius. All wines benefit from being stored or chilled in the dark, UV light has the capacity the break down the structures within wine, rendering it less palatable and giving it a noxious smell. If you find it impossible to store your wines out of direct light, wrap the bottle in a dark tightly woven cloth in order to facilitate a dark environment. Do not underestimate the power of light bulbs to emit UV light, they can and they do. Do not leave lights on in your wine storage area assuming that the light they emit is acceptable, it is not, and it will affect the quality of your wine.
Never store a corked bottle upright, always on its side, the cork has to maintain a certain degree of wetness in order to work properly.
All of these “musts” loan themselves beautifully to the fact that you need to buy a small chest freezer for wines if you are the least bit serious about your wine, and the storage thereof.
What exactly is a small chest freezer?
They are the perfect accoutrement for the wine aficionado and the casual collector, and darn decent looking to boot. Not necessarily a freezer at all, more of a chest refrigerator, but we don’t need to worry about that distinction right now. The chest freezer is usually a beautifully designed piece of furniture with the wine freezer (or refrigerator) built right into it. They come in a multitude of sizes and shapes and cost points too. You are sure to find the right style, size or color for your decor, and you certainly couldn’t find a better way to store your precious wines. The wine chest freezer will fit into all kinds of different and even tight or difficult spaces, and as long as you can open the door, you will be in business. There are hundreds of models and styles in the wine chest freezers, so start looking now.
Temperature Considerations
All wines, white or red should probably be stored in a chest freezer, sometimes called a chest refrigerator. Do not be taken aback by the term freezer, you do not want to freeze your wines at all that is just the name of the piece of equipment. While it is ideal to store your red wines in a cool, underground area, in most parts of the world that will not be enough to guarantee that the wine does not exceed 24 degrees Celsius. At 24 degrees Celsius, even for the shortest period of time, wine of any color will begin to oxidize, which ruins the wine, and renders it useless. Since you have probably spent a considerable deal of time and money laying down your wine collection, the chest freezer is the best way to go for both your whites and reds, you can compensate between the two types of wines by setting a temperature on the chest freezer somewhere between the optimum for both, say 9 Celsius.
Keep it Constant, the Temperature that Is
When you have finally decided on the temperature that you want to store your wine at, keep it constant. Whether you are storing the wine for a week or a year, the best way to guarantee the quality of the wine you bought is to keep the temperature constant throughout the storage period of the wine. Wines begin to breathe as they warm up, whether in the bottle or not, and repeated fluctuations in temperature, even if only slight will cause the wine to start breathing, which can lead to the destruction of the wine over time. Temperatures should not vary more than 1.6 Celsius in the wine storage area, thus recommending highly the chest freezer for your wine storage needs. A wine chest freezer can keep your bottles stored in the right position (not upright) and the right temperature for whatever length of time you need to store them; and won’t shed light on the bottles and their sensitive contents. We all know the incredible value of fine wines, and the care you need to take in the preserving of your choice vintages, there is truly no better storage device today for the wine collector than the chest freezer.