How is wine best stored at home?

You can best store wine between 15 and 20 degrees Celsius in a dry place, advises the Australian Wine Research Institute.

Above 25 degrees quality deteriorates if that lasts longer than a few hours. At 30 degrees, off-flavours develop after about a year. Above 40 degrees a wine changes within days. A Dutch living room is often at 20 to 21 degrees in winter, and that is the upper end of the range.

Choose the coolest cabinet in the house against an interior wall, out of the sun and away from the central heating boiler, the dishwasher and the stove.

The meter cupboard seems logical, but in many homes pipes run past it, which makes it warm and variable. A cupboard in the hallway, an under-stairs cupboard or a cellar cupboard usually does better. Put a thermometer in it and watch how the temperature behaves for a week before you put bottles away.

Wine expands with warmth and shrinks with cold, so the cork moves a tiny bit with every change and air can get past.

The Australian Wine Research Institute calls this thermal cycling: the difference between day and night pushes the cork up and can cause leakage. A cabinet held constantly at 19 degrees is therefore better than one that swings between 12 and 24 degrees.

Storing on its side makes little difference to the wine itself, but it keeps a natural cork moist, and that counts in long storage.

In research that the Australian Wine Research Institute refers to, the position of the bottle over five years had little effect on composition and taste. What does count is humidity: in dry air a cork can dry out and start to leak. That does not apply to a screw cap, so those bottles can stand upright.

Light causes sulphur compounds to form in wine that spoil the aroma, and clear glass lets more of it through than green glass.

A dark cupboard is therefore the simplest measure you can take. Do not put bottles on a windowsill or under a lamp that burns all evening. Wine in clear glass, such as much rosé and sparkling wine, is more sensitive to it than wine in dark green glass.

Wine does not have to carry a best-before date, so the bottle itself says nothing about how long it keeps.

How long a wine keeps well depends on acidity, tannin, residual sugar and alcohol. Wine that is drunk within a year is fine in a cool, dark cupboard. If you want to put bottles away for years, a stable temperature matters more than the exact level of it.