Avoid This Potentially Disastrous Wine Shopping Mistake
While many people associate wine with the Eiffel Tower and the canals of Venice, the country that consumes the most of this globally-adored drink isn't even in Europe. PBS reports Americans are the world's top wine sippers. Martha Stewart shares that in 2020, the U.S. put away 872 million gallons of wine.
Of course, many Americans are sating their weekly craving by attending wine-tasting parties and treating themselves to a vintage bottle at a restaurant on Friday nights. But the primary way Americans have managed to rack up the bottle count in the U.S. is by visiting the alcohol aisle when grocery shopping. According to Forbes, 45% of American drinkers put wine in their shopping carts on a regular basis. However, knowing which brand sells the best tasting rosé is the least of your grocery run concerns because there's one wine shopping mistake that could put your favorite drink in utter peril.
Be careful how you put wine in the cart
Picture this — you're at the grocery store carefully picking out which wine you'll be sipping for dinner tomorrow. You're following MasterClass' advice and selecting a bottle with a high ABV content, which ensures it has a sweet, rich flavor, and you make a disastrous move. You put the wine in the baby's seat.
We get it ... you may be wary of putting your wine in the lower part of your shopping cart because you fear that your other items packaged in glass or metal might break the bottle. And the baby seat is where people usually put fragile items like eggs and bread, so it seems like the obvious choice to store your wine as you shop, but it really isn't. You can allay any worries about keeping bottles in the lower area by cushioning your wine with springy food items or filling a wine tote bag to stabilize them.
According to Kitchn, if you must put your wine bottle in the top seat, put up the plastic barrier, so your chardonnay doesn't fall through the cracks. Don't let your wine shatter before you have a chance to cook up a delicious pasta with it, and close off those baby leg-hole gaps. Then you can rest easy knowing your wine will stay safe and sound while you finish off your weekly grocery shopping.