Questions for sommeliers and barkeeps

[mollyringle]

(Confession: I misspelled "sommelier" two different ways before finding the right spelling.)

Dear LJ Genies,

Is it true that you shouldn't re-refrigerate beer and wine? (i.e., Refrigerate it, then take it out until it's room temperature, then someday put it back in the fridge again.) Even if you never open the bottles? Someone recently compared it to re-freezing food, in terms of culinary badness, saying that the refrigeration somehow changes the drink, and that therefore you shouldn't take unused wine/beer out of the fridge and put it back into storage. Anyone with expert experience or training is encouraged to enlighten me on the truth or falsity of this claim.

Thank you.

Comments

[scratchedcornea.livejournal.com]

Re-refrigerating an unopened bottle can damage it because you will be changing the aging rate, and the oxygen that passed into the bottle when it was at room temp will remain there, unable to escape due to the now lower temperature (and thus slower transfer of gasses across the cork), affecting the flavor of the wine.

so...could you re-refridgerate an uncorked bottle of wine?

[laleonaenojada.livejournal.com]

From my previous comment:

Re-corking and re-refrigerating a bottle that you opened will also trap the oxygen within the bottle, which can affect the flavor, but is not as much of a culinary sin as re-refrigerating an unopened bottle, because an opened bottle has already been completely exposed to oxygen.