Storing your wine

By OFER ZEMACH
Following a couple of simple rules is the key to keeping wine longer than a month or two. First realize that wine has three enemies: light, heat and lack of humidity. • Keep bottles out of direct sunlight (in a box or closet, for example) if storing for more than a month or two. Prolonged exposure to light can change the chemical structure of a wine. Wine bottles, especially for red wines, are made from dark glass for this reason. Yet dark glass alone is not enough to keep a wine in its original condition for very long. • Heat is probably worse for wine than light. Wine can easily start to taste cooked after just a few weeks at higher temperatures. To avoid this, store wine in the coolest spot in your home. • Store bottles on their sides so that the corks stay in contact with the wine. If you let a wine bottle stand vertically too long, the cork will shrink enough to allow air into the bottle and oxidize the wine.