Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Potential wine disaster avoided

Recently, the Lou was hit with a storm, aftermath of Ike. We live in an older neighborhood, which means big old trees and above ground power lines. I’m sure you get where this is going….we’re often without power. In fact, if you live in St. Louis and know someone is without power due to a storm, there’s a really good chance the Lush’s are powerless.

As you know, we’ve also purchased a 100 bottle wine fridge in the past year. It is glorious- dual digital temps, very nice. Well, last Sunday morning, the Lush’s went powerless with a full wine fridge. About 2 hours later, I called my good friend Lucy to ask if she could look up our outage status. The very first thing she said is “do you need to bring the wine over?”. Aww. What a good friend, right? I said no, I hope it comes back on soon and its not that warm outside, so I should be fine. (at the time the temp was about 55 and the expected high was around 70, I think. ) I stuck a regular non-digital fridge thermometer in the wine fridges to monitor the temperature, opened all the windows, and we left to go grab something to eat and watch some football. When we returned, still powerless, the temperature in the fridge was just under 65, about the temperature of the house.

Although the Lush Red Wine Storage Temperature is 57-58 degrees, in general, I feel anything under 65 degrees, even below 70, is fine. Since, as noted in earlier posts, wine stores and restaurants store and serve things at room temperature, which is usually 72-77, but I prefer to keep it under 65.

Well, the power returned a bit before 6. Luckily the temperature was on our side, so the wine held at 63/64 degrees. Potential disaster avoided. Whew. But for next time, I'm glad I have friends with extra room in their cellar. :)

1 comment:

LucyinStLou said...

Of course you can always use the cellar. I don't know what a good friend I am though. Maybe the first thing I should have said was "do YOU need to come over" :)