When is red wine ruined?
I just moved and my new place is upwards of 85 degrees since I have no a/c. I am planning on getting a wine storage cooler but is my red wine ruined already by being in this heat?
Tagged with: red wine • wine storage
Filed under: All Things Wine
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As a wine drinker and collector for many years, I found that wine is a bit more resilient than most people think.
While heat is wine’s greatest enemy, brief exposure to heat, or storing for a while in hotter-than-ideal temperature does not ruin the wine instantly. What that condition causes is to make the wine not able to be cellared for a long time (>3-4 years). However, if you are just keeping your wines for a few weeks or possibly few months, your wine will be fine.
A good wine storage temprature is about 50’s F. White wines likes cooler 50’s, while red wine can stand higher 50’s. However, if you really think about it, the wine that we purchase at grocery stores are usually kept in 70’s or even 80’s degrees - not the ideal 50’s that we always say. Even at a fine restaurant, the wine cellar are often used for guest dining, so the temperature there is not ideal either. Yet they keep very fine wines in those wine cellars of the restaurants.
My suggestion is the following:
1) Open a bottle of two of your wine to see if it might be ruined.
2) If the wine tastes fine, go get the wine fridge as soon as possible. If you need to (ie if the new place it too hot), you can keep your wine in regular refrigerator for a few days while you shop for the cooler. You can ge the cooler at your local Best Buy, Conn’s, Lowe’s, Home Depot, large Wine stores, etc. Or you can try http://www.iwawine.com