It’s so frustrating when you reach for a bottle of wine and the cork breaks inside the neck as you try to remove it.
But if that’s ever happened to you, it was probably due to the way you were storing your bottles.
Storing them in the wrong way can result in the cork crumbling or breaking before you’ve had a chance to take it out.
So if you’ve been keeping your bottles with corks in an upright position, you’ve definitely been storing them wrong.
You should never store bottles upright as corks can dry out and become brittle if they are not kept in contact with the wine in the bottle
It turns out that there is a very good reason why winemakers, restaurants and wine snobs keep their bottles in a rack.
Wine critic Joanne Simon told Cosmopolitan: ‘Bottles of wine should be stored horizontally to keep the wine in contact with the cork and help prevent the cork from drying out.’
If the cork becomes too dry, it can become brittle and break up, causing it to get stuck in the neck.
If you do pull it out in one piece, tiny pieces of cork can still end up floating in your wine.
The best way to store wines with corks is horizontally on a wine rack
Simon added that it’s best to use a ‘smooth, rounded’ corkscrew rather than one with a ‘sharp, bevelled edge’ to avoid breakages.
If you don’t have enough room for a wine rack, stick to screwcap wines which don’t need to be stored horizontal.
However it may not taste as good, as earlier this year researchers from the University of Oxford found that the sound of a cork popping makes us think our wine tastes better.
Professor Charles Spence, lead author of the study, said: ‘Our senses are intrinsically linked – what we hear, see and feel has a huge effect on what we taste.
‘The sound and sight of a cork being popped sets our expectations before the wine has even touched our lips, and these expectations then anchor our subsequent tasting experience.’