Today, I am back in Philadelphia for the return of the big bike race. Yes, the Philadelphia Cycling Classic is back after a ten-year absence and I could not miss it. For years I was, in a sense, the “voice” of the race as I served as the “Radio Tour” operator, informing all of those in the race exactly what was going on.

But this article is not about that.

I did not get into the city until about 1:30 am this morning due to several flight delays. I understand that the weather was a significant contributor, but it seems as though every flight I have taken over the last year has been delayed.

That has made me rather grumpy this morning. And what better way to deal with grumpiness than a good old rant?

Just about every couple of weeks, it seems, I come across an article about how to store wine. They often come with titles, once again, telling you how you are doing everything wrong. “Storing Wine at Home? These Are the 3 Mistakes to Avoid” (Food & Wine), “You Don’t Need a Wine Fridge If You Keep Your Bottles Out of These 6 Places” (CNET), “You’re Probably Storing Wine Wrong — We Can Fix That” (Food & Wine, again). I could go on, but I won’t. All these articles want you to believe that there is some magic formula for wine storage.

There isn’t.

Part of the problem, in my opinion, wine connoisseurs have spent years, decades, even centuries trying to make wine seem mysterious, magical, even mystical. But it is a beverage. Just a beverage. Sure, it can be, at times, a special addition to a meal or a social setting, but we need to stop treating it like it is brutally fragile and it needs to be treated with the utmost care.

News flash: it doesn’t.

Sure, for more expensive bottles that you might want to collect and age and blah and blah and blah, you will want something more elaborate than a six bottle rack on your kitchen counter. But I am pretty confident that buyers of First Growth Bordeaux are not reading Food and Freaking Wine for wine storage tips.

For the vast majority of wine drinkers out there? Don’t worry about it so much. Wine is not all that fragile. It’s not a pound of fresh salmon, a quart of wild strawberries, or even a gallon of milk. Just like just about anything you would consider ingesting, keep it away from extreme heat as much as possible.

In other words, don’t leave it in the trunk of your car on a hot day for very long. That’s about it. You want to keep your wine on that nifty wooden rack you bought at Target and put together yourself and the only place that makes sense is the counter next to the fridge? Do it.

Just about every article ever written about wine storage says don’t keep it on top of the refrigerator. Heat, light, vibration. Bad, bad, bad. Every author wants to drill it into your head that if you have a wine rack on top of the fridge, you are failing at wine and are likely a complete moron. While it is certainly not the best place to keep your wine, if you are like most people and you plan on consuming that wine in the short term, say, before the end of the month? It’ll be fine on top of the Frigidaire (but better on the counter).

The wine industry is hand-wringing non-stop about how to get younger people drinking (more) wine. Well, as the parent of two young adults, one way to discourage them is to continually tell them that they are doing it wrong and impose a host of rules. Many of the articles about wine storage say that you don’t need a wine fridge, which is true, but “you need to store your wine in the coolest, darkest, calmest place in the house, and store them on their side so the corks don’t dry out.”

Bull crap.

Sure, some places are better for wine storage than others, but if you are going to drink that bottle of wine tonight? It really doesn’t matter at all, as long as it is not in the trunk of your car (and even that might not matter). As for storing it on its side? It takes a long time for a cork to dry out and allow oxygen to seep in. Months, even years. That Pinot Noir will be fine standing upright until Saturday. After all, it was probably standing upright when you bought it, no?

Look, I realize that any one of you could sit there and call me the world’s biggest hypocrite as I have three wine fridges and a temperature controlled walk-in wine cellar. The difference is, many of the bottles in them I have had for over a decade and, well, then it makes sense to have a better storage system than “under the bed somewhere”. Even so? I am pretty sure that those six bottles of 2005 Château Margaux in the back of the closet are doing just fine.

OK. I’m done. I am going to need a nap.