BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Wine Wine storage--temps

We recently took a trip through Missouri and up through Michigan, and we did a lot of wine tasting (and subsequent purchasing!) of a variety of wines--chardonnays, pinot noirs, cabernets, and one sparkling white. The wine bottles were kept in a cardboard box in the back of our car--some of them for a week--under a canvas cover. However, I'm worried that the occasional heat in the car might've ruined them. I've just opened a Seyval from our first stop, and it's lovely, but I'm worried about the others. How long can a bottle stay in higher temps before going bad? Also, how cool should the storage area be now that we've brought so many home?

Hi, there's a guy - Victor Marques - who knows a huge amount about wines. He may be able to answer your query. (JOY)

Thanks for asking

Travelling with wine in a car in hot climates is a problem. The inside of a car can get very very hot.

However wine is surprisingly robust and its bottle is a fairly good insulator so it gives some protection to the wine inside. Various experiments have been done comparuing two identical bottles , leaving wine on the back seat of a car in direct sunlight on a very hot day and the other in ideal storage and then opening them later have shown no difference between the wines. However its probably best if these wines are drink sooner rather than keeping them for aging for a decade

Check the closure, if the cork has been raised a little out of the neck and/or there has been some leakage then the bottle may have been heat damaged and you should drink up as soon as possible.

I am glad it seems that -- from your tasting of the Seyval - the wines are OK.

As for long term storage at home. More important is a steady temperature rather than one that quickly rises and falls. Best to keep wines in a dark cool place. Colder the wine is kelt the slower it will develop and vice versa. So a on a rack above the kitchen stove is not ideal for that $200 bottle you intend keeping ten years. BUt I keep some wines I intend drinking in the next 6 months in my kitchen.

Back to car travel: if you can get a wine carrier made from expanded polystyrene, or even one of those large boxes intended for beer and ice, they are good insulators in cars.