Please Stop Storing Your Fancy Wine in the Fridge

In the year 2023, I’m not going to try to convince you to see the merits of refrigeration. Beyond keeping your leftovers safe for taking to work the next day and helping you freeze pints of stock for when the inevitable flu hits, you might also be using your fridge to keep bottles of wine at the perfect temperature for impromptu dinner parties. But just how long is it okay to keep that bottle of Chardonnay nestled up against a plastic tub of lettuce or some asparagus? 

“A typical refrigerator, which is set to a temperature between 33 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit, is too cold for most wines’ aging potential,” says Leonara Varvoutis, general manager and sommelier at Coltivare in Houston. She further explains that when you take a room temperature wine and put it into a cold fridge, you inadvertently end up shocking the wine. “Then science happens! The wine is shocked, tartaric acid falls out of the body of the wine in the form of ‘wine diamonds,’ and the wine loses some of its complexity, balance, and flavor. Thus, very quickly, the wine becomes unbalanced and stays unbalanced, compounding its unbalanced flavors for the duration of its ‘aging’ in the fridge.”  Storing your wine in a fridge that is too cold can also invite condensation, another unwanted side effect. “Too much humidity and you suffocate the cork, not allowing the oxygen to get through at all, prolonging or not even allowing aging potential at all,” says Varvoutis.

But that’s not the only reason you might not want to age special bottles in your fridge. Carolyn Lassen, the sommelier at Husk Nashville, notes that the vibrations of the compressor in a refrigerator can upset the sediments in wines meant for aging, which can cause the wine to develop a less-than-savory flavor. 

Instead, Lassen suggests storing your wine on its side in a cool, dark place — a cellar is ideal, but a closet will also do. “The bottle being stored on its side allows the wine to maintain contact with the cork, which prevents the cork from drying out,” she notes. “This could cause unwanted oxygen to interact with the wine and taint it.” 

Avoiding bright lights is also key because UV lights can degrade a wine, especially over time. Varvoutis also suggests investing in a good wine fridge, which are temperature controlled, dark, and humidity controlled, three critical components for aging wine, adding: “If they’re willing to spend money on such rare bottles, they better be willing to spend money to protect those bottles, and every facet counts!”