No, the man who asked you to enjoy naked chardonnay for WBW #36 is not asking you to flash the wine world. He just wants to see where you store your wine. Check out your favorite blogs today to see how we store our wine, and if you feel moved take some pictures of your own wine storage and upload them to Lenn's Flicker project.
Without further ado, here are my racks:
The Vinotemp wine fridge to the left represents GWU$20's premium storage facility. It was bought last spring at Costco for just shy of $600 plus the cost of a truck rental from Enterprise since the damn thing wouldn't fit in my car! I purchased it after a lengthy and useful discussion here about what I should do to properly store wine in LA over the hot summer. Until my ultra-deluxe closet is built in what is now a china cabinet (thank you, El Jefe, for this suggestion!), this plug-in unit is fitting the bill and providing room for 52 of my more expensive and long-lived bottlings. One day, it will go into my kitchen when it receives a major overhaul.Most of my stored wine, however is parked under my windowseats on the Sonoma Coast.
There are six cases of wine up there, stuffed into boxes and sitting in the cool, damp air of an unheated house that never goes below 50 degrees. I am thinking of upgrading my boxes and getting some of these nifty running shelves from Wine Enthusiast. Making this improvement would have the added benefit of me being able to actually tag the wines so that I am not rummaging through them in pursuit of my Escafeld Zinfandel!
Back in LA, overflow from the wine fridge can be found in one of two places: my guest room closet, which thanks to our stucco walls stays quite cool for 9 months of the year.And the white wines I will drink over the next week or so get moved out of the closet and put in the worst of all storage options: those silly wooden racks in the kitchen. Happily, they are not above the refrigerator. And fear not, they sit there no longer than 10 days. My criss-cross wooden racks in the kitchen are simply the staging area for wines that will be popped into the fridge a few hours before dinner to cool down to the right temperature. It's too embarrassing to include the photo here, but I'll upload them to the Flicker pages.
Thanks to Lenn and Jeff for this Friday fun!
5 comments:
How's the Vinotemp working for you? Does the temperature stay fairly constant? I'm planning to buy a similar priced unit in the next few months, and Vinotemp is definitely a contender, so I would love to hear your experience.
By the way, love your blog!
http://oeno.blogspot.com
Welcome, Eddie. Great name for a blog, by the way. OK, I love my Vinotemp. It sits in my office at home, and I was worried it would be too noisy but it really isn't. The temperature does cyle between 54 and 59, and they say the interior temperature varies from top to bottom, but I'm just not all that worked up about this. Nothing is going to stay in there for more than 5 years, so I'm not convinced it will matter all that much. Most importantly, it protects the wine from LA summers. I've found another fringe benefit: I love my red wines a tad cooler than room temperature in LA. So I tend to take reds out of the fridge, let them warm up a tad, and then drink them. They are so much better when they're served at the right temp!
Howdy Dr. Debs,
You can check out my rack, if you'd like, at:
The Cellar Door.
As for your quandary regarding the wooden racks in your kitchen, why not just put the "to be consumed soon" bottles straight into the fridge? The cold, short of freezing, won't hurt them.
cheers,
McDuff
Great rack, David! And I always love when you leave a comment, because you cut to the chase. Unfortunately, our fridge is even more full than our wine racks. But I see your point: take the white wines out of the closet for the week, put them straight in the fridge, and then remember to take them out 20 mins. ahead of time.
Unfortunately, all of these photos put my wine storage system to shame: I keep everything in a cupboard just outside my kitchen. Given Beijing is hot during the summer, and cold during the winter, and that the heating is turned on by decree - meaning we freeze for a few weeks until some magical day arrives when the heating goes on - I am guessing my wine takes more than a bit of punishment.
JB
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