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Due to space constraints I keep my oils and some various cooking sauces above the gas stove/oven. These can get VERY hot up there. Am I ruining my oils? The red wine seems like a bad idea in particular...

oils etc above stove

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Yes, it's bad for basically everything.

Oils, of any variety, will go rancid much faster there. It'll be most obvious for the least stable ones, but they'll all go eventually. And if you've ever accidentally cooked something with rancid oil, you'll know, it's not a pleasant surprise.

Anything aromatic will degrade a lot faster too. Even before your olive oil goes rancid, it'll have lost all the nice olive oil flavor. Aromatic vinegars will lose their flavors as well, and the red wine will definitely go faster. And this is why it's also a bad idea to store spices there, though you don't seem to be doing that.

The soy sauce might do okay, since it has stronger flavor and is less dependent on aromatics (it has salt and some umami), but it's probably the only one.

My advice would be to try to find a wall-mounted rack for pans or utensils, and hopefully free up some space elsewhere in the kitchen to store those bottles.

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  • Thanks, I'll look for another storage solution for these (basically everything in my kitchen is wall-mounted at this point.)
    – moon prism power
    Commented Feb 15, 2014 at 21:11
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I would also be worried about the risk of those bottles falling onto the stove top and:

  • Starting a fire
  • Extinguishing a gas burner, letting gas leak out
  • Falling and tipping over a pot
  • Falling and just making a mess
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  • .. or even more likely, making an existing, manageable fire worse.
    – rackandboneman
    Commented Jan 17, 2016 at 1:05
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This is a bad idea. Plant oils will break up when exposed to air, sun or higher temperature, spoiling your oils. What's more, the temperature will also cause plant oils to hydrogenate partly, creating harmful trans- fatty acids. If you have no other place to store those bottles, put at least the plant oils in the fridge.

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    Hydrogenation will not occur without a catalyst and much much much higher temps and forced bubbling. Rancidity may happen more rapidly but that is Different
    – SAJ14SAJ
    Commented Feb 15, 2014 at 20:52

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