For those of us interested in being smart with our money (www.AshleysBigSecret.com members one and all), the great thing about putting wine away to age is that you can find a nice, reasonably-priced wine at your wine store today. You put it in storage for a few years and, then, bring it back as a truly great wine. In this way, you can drink amazing wines and spend a not so amazing amount of money to do it.
Where – Wine should be stored at less than 60°F. Ideally, wine should be stored at 55°F, the temperature in underground cellars. So, where in your house can you find a place that will remain less than 60°F, constantly?
The answer is not in your kitchen. The kitchen is the warmest part of the house, yet it is where people most often store their special wines. When they do, their special wines are being ruined.
You need to find a place in your house that is cool and not overly dry, such as a part of your basement away from the furnace and water heater. However, if you do not have such a place in your house, you can either buy a home wine cooler to store your wines or you can rent commercial wine storage space, both of which I do.
In terms of wine coolers, I bought a 48 bottle wine cooler at Home Depot on sale for around $100, not so bad. Larger wine coolers have, as you might have guessed, larger prices. Commercial wine storage is available in all large and most medium-sized cities. For about $325 a year, you can rent a wine locker at Strong Box Wine Storage in Chicago that holds 24 cases of wine.
The advantage of having wine in a separate, inconvenient location is that you tend to forget about the wine in storage which allows it to age unmolested. In this way, you are protecting the wine from you when you wish you had a great bottle of wine; or worse, you find yourself out of your everyday wine at home late one night.
What – This is the exciting part about storing wine, or putting it back, as we budget wine snobs like to say. You get to find a wine that you like, today. A wine that is priced right, today, but will benefit from being allowed to age. You are looking for a wine that will sleep for a few years and emerge from your cellar as a great wine at a great price.
I look for big (strong flavored) wines at reasonable prices. Weak tasting wines will not improve with age. They will just further weaken in taste. For this purpose, you are specifically looking for a wine that is bold and a little rough that would benefit from the mellowing that comes with age.
An example of a wine that was bought at a reasonable price and came out of storage a few years later as a spectacular wine was a 1992 Pahlmeyer Proprietary Red Wine. My son-in-law, Doctor Tim, suggested I buy the only case of it in the wine store where he worked at the time for about $18 a bottle.
While the wine was sleeping in my storage, the movie Disclosure came out featuring Demi Moore ordering a bottle of Pahlmeyer for her planned seduction of Michael Douglas. Pahlmeyer Wine, which wasn’t available anywhere anyway, became impossible to find and all the more valuable. Even without the excitement of the movie, this was great wine and when I pulled it out of storage a few years later, it was one of the greatest wines I had ever tasted and lucky me with 12 bottles. Life was good.
So, the object of finding a wine to put away is first to find one you like and that would benefit from being put away for a few years and, as any Ashley’s Big Secret Aficionado can tell you, it is lots of fun to find things to buy that are a deal.
In a coming blog, I will tell you some wines that are priced right, right now and would benefit from being put back.
In the meantime, remember don’t put nice wines in the kitchen, put them someplace where they have a constant cellar temperature and humidity or drink them as soon as you can. As for the nice wines you have without appropriate storage for them, a good plan would be to invite me (wino@ashleysbigsecret.com ) to come over and help you drink anything nice that you have that desperately needs to be drunk, now.
One more thing to remember, jewelry from Ashley’s Big Secret (www.AshleysBigSecret.com) is meant to be enjoyed immediately and does not need to be put away for later. Enjoy it now!
In wine we trust, J.
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