Oxygen is a vital, critical component to you, me and all human beings. Alas, the story is a bit different when it comes to wine. If wine is exposed to more than a small amount of oxygen, the results can be horrific. How so? Well, it might be better used for your fish and chips!
Timing is a big issue when it comes to wine. When you open a bottle of wine, you often want to let it breathe for a few minutes depending on the type of wine in question. Why? The exposure to oxygen will modify the taste of the wine in a manner that was planned for by the vintner at the winery. Take that same bottle of wine, however, and leave it uncorked and on the table for a couple of hours and what happens? The wine "goes bad" and tastes terrible. The reason has to do with the temperature probably getting to high and the impact oxygen exposure is having on the wine.
Wine
What is the problem with oxygen exposure? It has to do with a microbe called acetobacter. It is almost always present in wine. When exposed to oxygen, the microbe starts doing something interesting. It starts converting the ethyl alcohol in the wine into acetic acid through a multistep process. So, why is this a problem? Well, acetic acid is the main component of...vinegar! Yikes!
It takes more than a few hours for acetobacter to convert the ethyl alcohol in wine to a vinegar substance. Leaving a wine bottle open for a few hours isn't a problem. Exposure to oxygen while the wine is being stored, however, is a different story. Even a tiny bit of oxygen leaking in through the cork can lead to a stored bottle of wine that is not wine, but vinegar. It happens all the time!
If you have are storing wine to let it age, you should take all possible steps to prevent oxygen from getting into the wine. The last thing you want to do is open a bottle after 10 years and get a whiff of vinegar!
Wine - Oxygen Problems
Thomas Ajava writes for AutoOwnersInsuranceCompanies.com [http://www.autoownersinsurancecompanies.com] - where you can buy cheap California car insurance [http://www.autoownersinsurancecompanies.com/Cheap-California-Car-Insurance].