Storing Wine Ingredients

Make wine at home for a few years and you will probably accumulate a lot of stuff. Pieces of equipment join the collection as the needs and resources come up. Consumable supplies are not always packaged for single-use applications and the leftovers hang around. Maintenance and cleaning supplies are often cheaper in larger packages, so while you are it at, you might as well get the economy size. All of it goes in a corner of the garage, in the basement, to a convenient outbuilding, or wherever else you can find room to stash it while not actively making wine. For this column, we are addressing just those supplies that serve in a direct wine-addition capacity. We have our imaginary winemaker’s cupboard and we are going to take a look inside. What belongs in there? How should it be stored? How long can you keep it and still get reliable results the next time you use it to make wine? Rather than relying on just accumulating things at random, we will look at the deliberate collection of things likely to