How should I store my wine?
There are a number of factors that affect the quality of your wine after it has been bottled and brought home.
Temperature: Wine likes to be stored in a temperature range of 10-16 C. White wine does better cooler than red, so if you’re storing on racks, keep the whites to the bottom.
Humidity: Wine likes a fairly high humidity to make sure the corks don’t dry out. 50-70% is ideal.
Light: Wine likes it the darker the better. Red wine is in green bottles to help prevent spoilage from exposure to light.
Vibration: Vibrations are very bad for wine, and can risk restarting fermentation, spoiling the batch. Keep the bottles away from furnaces, washer/dryers and other sources of vibration.
How long can I keep my wine?
The Wine Butler recommends you drink your wine within 3-4 years if kept in ideal storage conditions.
When should I drink my wine?
At the Wine Butler we keep the acidity of our wines quite low. Additionally, we use 1/5th to 1/7th of the preservatives present in most LCBO wine. As a result our wine is drinkable quite young. However, we do recommend a minimum storage period of 2-3 months, as even a few months will bring a change to balance, texture and body that really lets the wine come into its own. For the very patient, aging and development will continue for as long as a full year of storage.
What do I do with my old bottles in the meantime?
You can absolutely re-use your bottles on your next batch of wine. We encourage it as a great way to contribute to keeping landfills empty and cellars stocked. What you’ll want to do is give them a thorough rinse with hot water as soon as you empty them out; to make sure no wine or sugars get crusted on. If you like the idea of replacing the labels and tops with new ones to match the new batch, it’s best to do that in advance of your bottling. You can remove most labels by soaking them in very hot water for about 30 minutes. Our foil tops can be easily removed with any sharp edge.