How to Store Sweet Wine
As a sweet wine enthusiast, you may stock up on your favorite wines, build a collection from winery tours, and want to keep a variety on hand for entertaining guests. Most storage and preservation rules apply to all wines, but sweet wines in particular prefer cooler storage and serving temperatures. Rising temperatures in the spring and summer months complicate long-term wine storage. The following considerations will help keep your unopened sweet wines crisp for 2 to 3 years.
The Proper Position
Wine bottles are best stored on their sides rather than upright on the bottom. The sideways position helps prevent the corks from drying out. Unfortunately, the practice of displaying wine bottles upright on shelves for optimal label visibility in a store setting runs counter to the best long-term storage position for wine bottles. Wineries and other stores often try to store wine bottles in the ideal position when possible, but it’s not always realistic. This is why wine coolers, wine racks, and decorative storage barrels are designed specifically to store wine bottles on their sides—sacrificing label visibility for preservation.
Light and Vibration
If you’ve ever left something with ink on it exposed to sunlight for a very long time, you probably noticed that the color fades dramatically: this is because the sun’s ultraviolet rays break down the dyes. It turns out those same rays are detrimental to sweet wines as well, even with prolonged exposure. Light sources are generally bad for wine, so it’s best to store your bottles in a dark place. Additionally, vibration can disturb sediment in wine over time, so to extend the lifespan of your sweet wines, store them away from constant foot traffic, furnaces, washing machines, garages, and other sources of vibration.
Wine Storage Tips for Spring: Temperature and Humidity
The rising temperatures and humidity in springtime create some challenges for long-term sweet wine storage compared to the winter’s ideal storage conditions. Fortunately, refrigeration technology and home storage conditions can go a long way in preserving sweet wines.
The closer you can keep the temperature and humidity to perfection, the longer your sweet wines will last. Sweet wines are best preserved around 55°F (13°C) in ideal storage, but keeping the ambient temperature between 45-65°F (7-18°C) is sufficient. Additionally, having too much or too little humidity can wreck the cork, label, and bottle. Most wine coolers and fridges have a humidity setting; set it to 70 percent, though 50 to 80 percent is sufficient. Basements naturally stay around the ground temperature, which remains between 50-60°F year-round, making them a pretty solid place to store wine if you don’t have a wine cooler. However, basements tend to have humidity levels of 30-50 percent, making them less suitable for long-term storage than wine coolers.
Serving Temperatures and Storage After Opening
The ideal serving temperature for sweet wine varies a bit by type, but it’s often best served a little cooler than the ideal storage temperature range. Most sweet wines should be served between 43-50°F, which you can target by transferring the bottles from the cooler or basement into a refrigerator for about an hour and a half. Additionally, if you do not finish the bottle after opening it, place it in the regular refrigerator to keep it fresh. Wine typically remains good for three to five days, but you can extend that timeline by re-corking the bottle, using a casu, stopper, or transferring the remaining wine into a smaller bottle.
While storing your sweet wines under ideal conditions may not be realistic for every enthusiast, the good news is that just getting your wine storage as close to those conditions as possible can go a very long way.