What temperature to store wine at

The conventional figure is 10–14°C, with 12°C as the centre. That range is not magic; it is simply cool enough to slow the reactions of ageing to a useful pace without stopping them.

What matters more than hitting the number is holding it. Repeated warming and cooling expands and contracts the wine and the air above it, which pumps air past the closure and pushes wine out. A cupboard that sits steadily at 18°C is better storage than one that swings between 10°C and 24°C with the seasons.

Warmer storage is not ruinous, it is faster: a wine kept at 18°C matures noticeably more quickly than the same wine at 12°C, and reaches whatever peak it has sooner. For a bottle to be drunk within a year or two, this is irrelevant.

Darkness matters, particularly for anything in clear or pale glass. Light strike is a real and specific fault, and it happens in months rather than years under fluorescent light.

For most households the honest advice is: find the coolest, darkest, most stable place you have — usually a cupboard on an internal wall away from the kitchen — and stop worrying. Wine that is going to be drunk soon does not need a cellar.