I'm in the Northeast and it's going to be some ridiculous number of degrees below zero tonight. I keep all my wine stored in the basement... I was starting to fear that they might freeze, but when I went downstairs to round them all up I figured that since I couldn't see my breath that it wasn't close to cold enough to freeze them. Is there anything to worry about? How cold does it have to get for something that is 13% alcohol to freeze?
Your water pipes will freeze first.
I went back to my physical chemistry book and calculated for a 13% ethanol in water solution a freezing point of something like:
-5.24 deg C
or
22.6 deg FOf course this was after a couple of glasses of Ravenswood Zin, so I'm not promising anything (however, there may be a few more solutes besides the alcohol there, so hopefully I am on the safe side).
justin
Not sure, but keep in mind that they store vodka etc. in the freezer, where the temperature is about 5 degrees F, and that doesn't freeze. Wine does freeze at that temperature, but there is no way in heck your basement is going to get that cold. Basements - if they are not heated - are basically wine cellars. The point is that being under ground level is very insulating - cooler in summer and warmer in winter.
Actually, I used to freeze opened wine to see how it worked. It remained quite fresh - those deposits were the only drawback. But if filtered or decanted or just poured from the top, I'd recommend it.
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