4 Essentials on How to Store Your Whisky
Whisky lovers spend a lot to procure great whisky. There’s not just the cost of the bottles, there’s also the considerable time building your network to find the right bottles, time spent learning the tricks and evaluating the condition of the bottles, time spent hovering at auction site and money for shipping and taxes.
Going through all that and finding your bottle is ruined because you didn’t store it correctly can be heartbreaking. Let’s have a look at the best way to store your whisky to ensure it stays in the best possible condition.
How to store whisky especially in the tropics like Singapore?
Number 1: Standing Up
This is where whisky and wine storage differ. Good wines need to rest on their side allowing slow interaction between the wine and the air outside. It comes with the risk that the wine will leak, or the cork will rot, ruining the wine. It’s worth the risk because of the upsides.
Whisky differs in two ways. Whisky does not need to interact with the air outside of the bottle and the corks are much looser. With whisky, there is no upside to laying it down and the downsides are much greater. For the best results you just want to leave them standing up. Some people say you need to invert them regularly to keep the corks moist, but this is not the case. They will be at their best if you stand them up and leave them alone as much as possible.
Number 2: In the Dark
As anyone who has had sunburn can tell you, the ultra-violet light in sunlight can be very damaging. This is not just true for your skin but also for your whisky, as UV will degrade some of the organics in your whisky that carry aroma and flavour. A few days or weeks will have minimal impact, but months and years will have a notable impact. Light will also degrade the ink in labels and packaging.
For long term storage it is best to keep the bottles and packaging in the dark. Stashing them in the back of a cabinet or cupboard is enough, so long as it does not have a glass front.
Number 3: Cool & Stable
When it comes to temperature, there are two things to watch out for – cool is better than hot and stable is better than fluctuating. Chemical reactions including oxidation and other forms of degradation occur more quickly at higher temperatures and more slowly at lower temperatures. You don’t need to keep your prize bottles in the freezer, but cooler is better.
This must be balanced against temperature stability. I would rather keep my bottles at a stable 25 degrees than in a room that fluctuates from 15 to 30 degrees each day because the aircon runs each night. Every time your whisky warms up it expands and pushes some vapour through the seal, and every time it cools down it contracts and pulls in a little bit of air. Your whisky then takes a breath every day, and the more breaths your whisky takes, the faster it changes. Again, your bomb shelter (or cellar, in other parts of the world) is your friend. With those thick walls and heavy doors that are rarely opened, it has the most stable temperature in your home. Dark, cool, stable. Perfect.
Speaking from a Singapore experience, the bomb-shelter in your HDB is perfect.
If you have a bigger collection and want to show it off in a room, consider blackout curtains and cool LED lighting.
Number 4: Moderate Humidity
When it comes to temperature, there are two things to watch out for – cool is better than hot and stable is better than fluctuating. Chemical reactions including oxidation and other forms of degradation occur more quickly at higher temperatures and more slowly at lower temperatures. You don’t need to keep your prize bottles in the freezer, but cooler is better.
This must be balanced against temperature stability. I would rather keep my bottles at a stable 25 degrees than in a room that fluctuates from 15 to 30 degrees each day because the aircon runs each night. Every time your whisky warms up it expands and pushes some vapour through the seal, and every time it cools down it contracts and pulls in a little bit of air. Your whisky then takes a breath every day, and the more breaths your whisky takes, the faster it changes.
Again, your bomb shelter in Singapore (or cellar, in other parts of the world) is your friend. With those thick walls and heavy doors that are rarely opened, it has the most stable temperature in your home. Dark, cool, stable. Perfect.
Protip: Store Whisky the Right Way to Protect Your Investment
Like anything else, whisky is susceptible to natural disasters. Depending on where you live, be sure to take the necessary precautions, particularly against earthquakes. But there is another form of disaster that you need to be very wary of, and that disaster is people. Especially YOU! Many whisky lovers have come home after a few drinks and thought “today is a great day to open that special bottle” only to realise later that it was not a great day to open that special bottle.
There is a practical way to avoid this and that’s by ‘splitting’ your collection. Break your whisky into groups called ‘Reserve’ and ‘Enjoy’. ‘Reserve’ should be the larger part of your collection and include the bulk of the rare and unusual bottlings. What’s left is what you wouldn’t mind opening and sharing on a whim. Now, take your ‘Reserve’ and keep in your dark, cool, stable bomb shelter and place your ‘Enjoy’ selection in a cabinet in full view in your living area. It may not be dark, but you’re going to drink them soon anyway. And more importantly, if someone (including tipsy you) decides to open one of them up, you’ll never feel upset.
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