Storing Cabernet Sauvignon requires consistent temperature and lighting conditions to prevent the wine from spoiling.

Storing Cabernet Sauvignon: Essential Tips for Collectors

Some of the world’s greatest and longest-lived wines are made from Cabernet Sauvignon. However, these wines can only reach their full potential when they’re stored properly throughout their lifetime. In this guide to Cabernet Sauvignon storage, you’ll learn which conditions are best for this type of wine, including the ideal temperature, humidity, lighting, and other essential factors.

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Wondering how to buy wine for aging? High-quality wines are usually designed to age.

How to Buy Wine for Aging: Your Guide to The Longest-Lived Wines

Knowing how to buy wine for aging is a challenge for many beginner collectors. This is partially because it’s easy to conflate quality with aging potential. However, just because a wine is delicious and received high scores from critics does not necessarily mean it can age for decades. So, which wines do have great aging potential and why should you age wine at all?

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Learn how to build a wine collection

How to Build a Wine Collection from Scratch

Many aspiring collectors aren’t sure how to build a wine collection. They see experienced collectors with lots of great wines in their cellars, and wonder how they know which wines are worth aging and drinking. What will these wines taste like when they’re aged? What if their tastes change in the ten or 20 years it takes to age a great wine? Unfortunately, collecting wine is a leap of faith most of the time. There’s no way to know for sure which wines will gain in value or appeal to your tastes in the future. However, there are a few basic guidelines to help budding collectors get their start building impressive, timeless, and enjoyable wine collections.

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Storing magnum wine bottles and other large format bottles is tricky.

The Best Method for Storing Magnum Wine Bottles

Storing magnum wine bottles is a major challenge for many collectors. One member of the Wine Berserkers forum had a few magnums of Krug and Riesling in off-site storage that she wanted to keep in a wine rack at home. This was a problem because the bottles were not only too large for a standard-sized rack to hold, but some of them were also unusually shaped. The Krug magnums were wide and heavy at the base, causing the neck of the bottles to tip too far forward when they were laid on their sides. To deal with this issue, she had a custom rack made specifically for her magnums and provided the company building the racks with the exact measurements of an actual Krug magnum to ensure the bottles would fit properly.

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Storing Bordeaux wine can be complicated

Tips on Storing Bordeaux Wine: How Long Should You Keep Your Bottles?

When I bought my first Bordeaux wine, I learned the hard way that storing Bordeaux requires careful planning. For instance, I didn’t realize that wines like 1999 Palmer and 1990 Château d’Yquem mature at different rates. I soon found out that each wine has its own timetable; the Palmer is already drinking well now and I may have to uncork it soon, whereas the Yquem could stay in my cellar for another 30 years.

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A Wine Bottle Inspection is an important part of buying wine

The Importance of Wine Bottle Inspection: This Simple Step Could Save You From Wine Fraud

Receiving a spoiled or fraudulent wine from an online retailer is immensely frustrating for wine collectors. Unfortunately, this is exactly what one Wine Berserkers forum member experienced when he bought bottles from an auction website a few years ago. After winning an online auction, the bottles arrived on his doorstep seemingly unscathed. But when he inspected them more closely, he saw that a couple of the bottles had signs of seepage around the cork, and appeared to be completely cooked. Based on the old, dried-on appearance of the damage and the fact that the other bottles in his order were perfectly fine, he assumed that the online auction house hadn’t performed a proper wine bottle inspection before selling the lot off.

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Wine Storage Gifts

Wine Storage Gifts Should Be on Every Collector’s Wish List This Year

One of the best Christmas gifts I ever received was a high-quality wine fridge that my parents filled to the brim with some of my favorite wines, including selections from Côtes du Rhône and a delicious bottle of 2005 Chevalier Père et Fils. It took me almost a year to get through all of the wonderful wines inside, but even after I opened my last gift bottle, that wine fridge remained an essential staple in my home. For the past six years, I’ve used it to store dozens and dozens of bottles, from wines for holiday celebrations to collectible Bordeaux.

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