storing wine is an important aspect of wine consumption, since wine is relatively sensitive to storage conditions and is one of the very few consumer products that can improve with age (although see ageing for details of how few, and which, wines this applies to). Until the era of inflation, wine producers and merchants regarded storing and ageing wine as part of their business, but since the 1960s they have steadily relinquished this role. The development of the en primeur market and the increase in the number of wine collectors leaves many more ordinary wine drinkers with the problem of how to store wine over long periods, often a decade or two.
