When some folks get serious about wine collecting, they tie themselves in knots over the question of how much (if any) they should chill their bottles while keeping them in long-term storage.
When you’re getting ready to actually serve wine, then the termperature does matter, and should of course vary according to the type of wine. But if you’re putting a bottle away in a cellar for what is likely to be several months or even years, then the temperature of the room, as long as it is at least somewhat on the cool side, is less important than the humidity. You need relatively high humidity to keep the corks from drying out and tainting the wine. Storing bottles on a slant so that the wine remains in contact with the cork helps accomplish the same thing.
Some experts do recommend storing wine at around 55 degrees Fahrenheit. That sounds fine if you have a room (or cellar) that stays that cool, but again, a temperature up to 65 or so will work, too, or even down to, say, 45. The main thing here is not to let the temperature vary much over the course of a wine’s storage life. Constant cooling down and warming up will hurt your wine in the long run, even destroying its taste.
Now what about actually chilling wine, as in a refrgerator or a refrigerated wine unit? This doesn’t make sense for the red wines, and it’s unclear why anyone would do this, unless they live in a very hot climate without air conditioning and this is the only way to keep the bottles cool at all.
You could refrigerate white wines, of course, but bear in mind that this treatment stops the wine from ever developing the aged flavor that many drinkers seek. If you do chill a white wine, don’t remove it from cold storage until you are ready to drink it. If removed from cold storage and allowed to then sit around for too long, many white wines will form a white haze. This haze will not affect the wine’s flavor, but it doesn’t look very pleasant, when what you want is a glass of wine that is as clear as possible.
