Is storing my wine in cardboard boxes safe?

Are you properly storing your wine? If you only drink a bottle of wine once in a while, proper storage techniques may not be an issue for you. If you are a wine enthusiast and keep many bottles on hand, you may want to give proper wine storage more thought.

What Should I Do With My Wine?

Most of us, unlike serious wine collectors, do not have a wine cellar in which to store our collection. So, what are your options for storing wine at home or in your retail storeroom? One option is to keep them in the custom cardboard boxes in which they were shipped. But a lot of people ponder whether this is actually the best way to store wine bottles and whether doing so might even be detrimental to the wine over time.

Wine Preservation in Cardboard Boxes

People worry that storing wine in cardboard boxes could expose the bottle to the unfavorable compound TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole), which could give the wine a musty flavor. However, the truth is that this substance is also present in wooden racks, cellar walls, and wine bottle corks. Wine is therefore kept in impermeable glass bottles, corked, and covered in metal, wax, or plastic to shield it from contaminants. Wine should not be stored in cardboard boxes for reasons that are not supported by science. However, is there a safe way to store wine bottles inside cardboard boxes?

How to Store Unopened Wine Correctly

For the wine to taste great, storage conditions such as humidity and temperature must be ideal. 45 to 65 degrees is the ideal range for storing wine. A wine that is kept above 70 degrees can go bad. To prevent dried-out corks, the humidity level for wine storage should be around 70%. Mold can develop on your wine if the relative humidity is over 70%. Any hardware or home improvement store will have a hygrometer that you can use to measure the humidity levels in your storage area.

Keep Boxes in A Dry, Dark Place

Avoid having direct lighting shine on your wine bottles to prevent UV light from affecting the wine. A wine that is kept in cardboard boxes is less likely to oxidize as a result of exposure to sunlight, incandescent lighting, and fluorescent fixtures found in retail storage areas, all of which can affect the wine's flavor. So, to preserve its delicate flavors, store your wine in cardboard boxes in a dark, dry location.

Setting Up Your Bottles

Corked wine bottles must be kept flat and lying when being stored. This prevents the cork from drying out by making sure it is always moist. Your wine may become spoiled when the cork on the wine bottle dries out and is exposed to oxygen. With a variety of cardboard and pulp wine shipping cartons, cold packs, and specially designed cardboard boxes, Custom Wine Packaging can keep your wine bottles stored, dry, and fresh for however long you need. To find out more about our wine shipping and storage solutions, contact us right away.