Great Wine Made Simple - Andrea Immer [117]
Sparkling Wines
Your best bet is to purchase “clam shell” Champagne stoppers, with two hinged metal clamps attached to a stopper top with a rubber or plastic gasket for a tight seal. You place the stopper on top, press down, and then close the clamps like a clam’s shell, and they anchor to the bottle lip. If you opened your sparkler carefully and didn’t “pop” the cork, losing precious carbonation, a stoppered partial bottle will keep its effervescence for at least another day or so. (In my experience, many bubblies keep their fizz and freshness in the fridge far longer—and yet, ironically, fear of flatness keeps so many people from enjoying bubbly regularly.)
Of course, preventing wine leftovers is usually as easy as a phone call. I have found that friends are always happy to do sharing duty over dinner or when I want to do a tasting.
Storing Wine
It is said in the trade that the average aging time for a bottle of wine in this country is seventeen minutes—the amount of time it takes to get the bottle home from the store and pull the cork. The fact is that for most people, storing wine isn’t a major issue, because we buy for current consumption. But when you do buy multiple bottles at a time for convenience and quantity discounts, or get extras as gifts, you need to know the best way to store them.
Decorative racks over the fridge in the kitchen may look nice, but they are not a good place for wine. Actually, at five foot one and three-quarters, I find that over the fridge isn’t a good place for anything—and I especially want my wine to be handy. What is worse, the heat from the fridge exhaust ensures that every sip is tepid. And like anything else, the warmth also speeds the rate of spoilage of wine. If you are buying a house or renovating, don’t fall for this one.
That said, wines are a lot more forgiving than most people think—you do not need 60 percent humidity and a 55-degree temperature to keep from ruining wine. When you’re keeping wine for the short-to-medium term (up to a few years), your basic requirements are darkness and a steady temperature. Darkness is necessary because ultraviolet light can contribute to quicker wine spoilage (watch out for wine shops with a lot of stock in the display window). The steady temperature shouldn’t be too high. For example, a steady room temperature is fine, but putting your bottles someplace where the temperature can spike may cause their contents to expand, push against the cork and compromise the seal. If oxygen can get in, the wine will then spoil quickly. A basement is of course the natural spot if you have one; if not, try storing wine under the bed, or in a closet or cabinet, ideally near the floor, since heat rises.
Cellaring Wine
“Cellaring” is the trade term for keeping wine for medium- or long-term storage, to give it time to develop and improve in the bottle. And as I have mentioned, it’s not for everyone, or every wine. Most of the wine sold in this country is meant to be consumed within two years (for whites) to three years (for reds) of the vintage year listed on the label. And if the wine isn’t going to get better, why wait? Enjoy the wine while its fruit and flavor are fresh and vibrant.
The wine categories that actually improve with bottle age in proper storage conditions are: vintage Port from Portugal, classic French red Bordeaux and Burgundy, the top California Cabernet Sauvignons, top Italian red wines (chiefly the Killer B’s—Brunello, Barbaresco, and Barolo—and the best super-Tuscans), and classic dessert wines like Sauternes from France. The rest of the world’s wines are generally made for early consumption while the fruit is fresh and vibrant.
But you don’t have to stop there. The collectible categories that I have listed