Cellaring Your Wine
The process of making your wine from a kit takes four to eight weeks. At this time your wine is ready to bottle, but it's not necessarily ready to drink! The minimum time you should let your wine age in the bottle is about two weeks. This is long enough for the wine to get over the shock of bottling, and begin opening up to release its aromas and flavours. Three months is much better if you can wait that long, and the wine will show most of its character at this point. Heavy reds will continue to improve for at least a year, and you'll be well rewarded for your patience.
Here are some tips for storing your wine:
1) The ideal temperature for wine storage is somewhere between 11°C and 14°C (52°F to 58°F). Anything over 21°C is considered too warm.
2)A consistent temperature is more important than one that fluctuates quite a bit. You should try to avoid rapid, extreme or frequent temperature changes. This could cause expansion and contraction of the wine in the bottles that can force the cork out of the bottle.
2)Keep your wine in the dark. Sunlight especially can damage your wine and age it prematurely.
3)Humidity is not as critical as you might think. That is, unless you plan on aging your wine for many years and you live in an extremely dry location,. Humidity of 50-80 percent should be fine. Too high of humidity can cause the corks to go moldy, but if this does happen, the wine is not necessarily bad. Pop the cork, taste the wine, then decide if it's gone off.
4)Too much movement can be harmful. A bit of movement won't hurt much. After all, you might need to rearrange your bottles once in a while. However, if you have heavy red wines that require a longer aging time, the tanins in the wine will be shed from the wine during the aging process. These tanins will attach themselves to the inside of the bottle. If this is disturbed too much, it will end up back in the wine and could cause the wine to be bitter.
If you don't have a cool room to store your wine in, all is not lost!! Find an unused corner of a closet, or the space under the stairs that just collects clutter. Wine is much better to store there. Just remember to keep it out of the sunlight and keep the temperature as consistent as you can.
Here are some tips for storing your wine:
1) The ideal temperature for wine storage is somewhere between 11°C and 14°C (52°F to 58°F). Anything over 21°C is considered too warm.
2)A consistent temperature is more important than one that fluctuates quite a bit. You should try to avoid rapid, extreme or frequent temperature changes. This could cause expansion and contraction of the wine in the bottles that can force the cork out of the bottle.
2)Keep your wine in the dark. Sunlight especially can damage your wine and age it prematurely.
3)Humidity is not as critical as you might think. That is, unless you plan on aging your wine for many years and you live in an extremely dry location,. Humidity of 50-80 percent should be fine. Too high of humidity can cause the corks to go moldy, but if this does happen, the wine is not necessarily bad. Pop the cork, taste the wine, then decide if it's gone off.
4)Too much movement can be harmful. A bit of movement won't hurt much. After all, you might need to rearrange your bottles once in a while. However, if you have heavy red wines that require a longer aging time, the tanins in the wine will be shed from the wine during the aging process. These tanins will attach themselves to the inside of the bottle. If this is disturbed too much, it will end up back in the wine and could cause the wine to be bitter.
If you don't have a cool room to store your wine in, all is not lost!! Find an unused corner of a closet, or the space under the stairs that just collects clutter. Wine is much better to store there. Just remember to keep it out of the sunlight and keep the temperature as consistent as you can.