Everything you need to know about cellaring wine

Like a good wine, every wine drinker’s tastes evolve over time. This journey usually starts as a teenager where our tastes are... well, less than discerning. For me that was homemade wine commandeered from my friend’s parents’ basement. In your early 20s, you start to develop an opinion of what you like to drink. For most, this opinion is easily influenced by cute critters on the label or flashy gimmicks (blue wine, anyone?). But as you approach your 30s, something changes and you find yourself not only wanting to consume wine—and good wine at that—but you want to cellar or age it. Now where do you start? What do you need to properly store wine? And what wine is even worth aging?

Find your wine guru

My first piece of advice for any enthusiastic wine drinker: find a good shop with staff that you trust to help you. Let’s say you purchase two bottles of wine a week and each bottle costs an average of $20. That means you are spending roughly $2,000 a year on wine (and for an enthusiastic wine drinker this is a very modest estimate). The point is, you will literally spend thousands of dollars in your lifetime on wine, so make sure you’re not wasting your money. Go make friends with the staff at your local wine shop. They’ll be able to help you determine what your taste is and introduce you to new wines that you likely would never have tried on your own.

Find a place to store the wine

Now that you’ve found your wine guru and feeling ready to start stashing away bottles, you need to determine where you will be storing these wines. The three major things you want to avoid are direct sunlight, warm or fluctuating temperatures and extremely dry air that can dry out the cork. A wine fridge is good but probably won’t offer you the amount of storage you will need to grow your collection, and while a temperature controlled cellar is ideal, it’s not necessarily feasible for everyone. For the average wine collector, your best bet is to find a cool dark place where you can install some horizontal wine racks. It’s very important to make sure that you lay your bottles down when storing them for an extended period of time so that the wine is always in contact with the cork, preventing it from drying out.

Don't age the wine for too long

As your collection grows, make sure you are taking regular inventory. The most common mistake that wine collectors make is letting their bottles age too long. It will seem like there is never the right time to open up that special bottle you’ve been holding onto for a decade, but it’s important to keep in mind that everything has a “window” in which it should be drunk. Again, employing the advice of a trusted wine professional will be helpful in determining what to drink and when. It’s also a good idea to buy multiple bottles of the same wine. I always say purchase at least three bottles at a time: one to drink right away, one to drink in a few years and one for when the wine is supposed to be at its absolute best, taking notes each time you open a bottle to help you keep track of its evolution.

Find high-quality wines

When purchasing wine, you don’t need to spend an arm and a leg, but do make sure to look for high quality red wines that are high in tannin, like syrah or cabernet sauvignon. High acid white wines like riesling or chenin blanc are arguably the most age-worthy wines in the world and vintage Champagne or wine made in the traditional method will also evolve beautifully after a few years in your cellar. Here are a few suggestions to get you started.