By: Lia Contesso
Submitted: 2010-11-04 09:54:24 | Word Count: 586
In the modern production of wine the stainless steel is commonly used; it is an iron alloy and, as the name says, it main characteristic is its non oxidation, which makes it particularly suitable for many uses. To work the stainless steel you need particular instruments, like lasers to cut it which allow a precision cut on plates up to 6 millimetres, forming stainless steel accessories for many uses.
Among the more common accessories in stainless steel for oenology there are the steel pools and the design bottle racks: from producers to consumers. The wine production process in fact starts from the harvest of the grapes, which are worked with various instruments to get first the must, which fermenting becomes wine.
The special systems in stainless steel, which include food trolleys used in various occasions, are safe and durable, thanks to the certainty that the material they are made of cannot oxidize.
If the stainless steel instruments used for the production of wine are specific and used in specialized fields, the wine stainless steel accessories commonly used are many: name, for example, the bottle racks; you need to pay attention, though, to the various drinks’ needs: while some, like liquors, can stay vertical, others, like wine, need to be kept angled enough for the cork to stay wet.
[ advertisement ]
In fact, it’s when the cork is not wet that the air is allowed to enter into the bottle, developing the fungus responsible for the disappointing corked taste; keeping the cork wet, instead, the air cannot enter and the wine is safe. The cork, in fact, is subject to a natural shrinkage in lack of the humidity it needs: keeping the wine bottles almost horizontally give the cork the humidity it needs to avoid it shrinking.
An optimal preservation of wine includes the accommodation of the bottles in a horizontal position as near as possible to the floor, in a silent and dark room, humid and with a temperature between 14°C and 15°C: in a word, a wine cellar. If you haven’t got one, though, don’t worry: you still can keep wine in your house! If you can, it would be better to store it in a room in which you can avoid switching on the heating, and which it’s possible to keep dark and silent.
Normally, white wines need to be served fresh; prosecco and sparkling wine in general should be served at a temperature of 8°C, though they should not be kept in the fridge for a long time, because their structural characteristics would change.
Of course, there are so many kinds of wine that it is impossible to establish a general rule for all of them: these indications are generalized and referred to the most common wines. Some more rare wines can have different characteristics: some sparkling wines, for example, should be served at slightly higher temperatures, like the prosecco millesimato (vintage sparkling wine), that, to allow their particular aromas to develop completely, are served at 12°C.
Hence, you need to know the specific characteristics of every bottle of wine to guess the temperature which better brings out its characteristics: to begin with, you can pay attention to the suggestions given in the label and, mostly for aged red wines, open them some hours before serving so that they can oxygenate and bring out their taste.
