The Wine Bottle

Anyone passionate about wine usually starts to collect it and as their wine collection grows they must begin looking for a place to store a wine collection.

A cupboard can readily be converted into a mini wine cellar to store a growing wine collection.

Before you begin building your mini wine closet consider the position of the closet in relation to the rest of the house or apartment.

Try not to convert a closet against an outside wall into your new wine cellar. The outside walls of your abode can be subject to wide fluctuations in temperature from season to season. Ideally, choose an internal closet where your wine will be able to be stored at a more constant temperature.

The degree and the speed of any change in temperature are critical elements in successfully storing and aging wine. A gradual change of a few degrees between from winter to summer won’t matter. A similar change each day will certainly cause harm to your wines by ageing them too quickly.

The most important rule when you are storing your wine is to avoid large temperature fluctuations. You’ll notice damage of this type immediately from the stickiness that will often form around the capsule. Over time, the continued expansion then contraction of the wine will damage the integrity of the cork. It’s just like having the cork removed and replaced every day. When this happens, very small quantities of wine may be pushed out along the edge of the cork allowing air to seep back in. Once the air is in contact with your wine the irreversible process of oxidation begins and your wine is ruined.

At 55º to 58ºF the wine will age gracefully, enabling it to fully develop as the winemaker intended. Higher temperatures age wine more rapidly and cooler temperatures slow the ageing process. The damage done to your wine will be irreversible if it is stored at temperatures over 82ºF even for a month.

Maybe the hardest part of building a wine cellar closet is finding other locations to store what is already in the closet!! Don’t hesitate … remove all the present contents (move them elsewhere / give away / auction them) and start out with an empty closet!

Wine racks can be purchased quite inexpensively from a hardware store, online retailer or storage shop and you’ll have a simple but very effective mini wine cellar.

Wine rack designs vary in the number of bottles they can carry; price variations have less to do with efficiency and more to do with aesthetics.

Individual racking makes bottle selection easy. If you place racks against only one wall of the closet there may still be floor or shelf space available for wines that you purchase by the case.

Building your own wine cellar is the best way to age your wine collection. A wine cellar must be designed to store wine in the right conditions as it ages, ensuring that the wine does not spoil and that it develops complexity.

Building your own wine cellar from the ground up – or more likely, the basement up – may seem like an overwhelming task, but the proverbial first step is usually the most difficult. It starts when you collect your first bottle of wine and soon you’ll find that your collection has grown so large that it requires its own wine cellar.

A well-constructed wine cellar can cost many thousands of dollars but so can a large refrigerated wine cabinet so often a custom built wine cellar at home can be the most economical and cost effective way of storing your wine.

There are several items to consider before you begin building your wine cellar.

Temperature must be a major consideration and also limiting the amount of natural light. Make sure the room is well insulated – extruded polystyrene insulation is ideal. If you live in a mild climate you may be able to build a passive wine cellar that requires no cooling system.

A wine cellar will usually have thicker walls. Two-by-six construction provides space for quality insulation, allowing the cellar to remain at a constant temperature. In an active wine cellar, major factors such as temperature and humidity are maintained by a cooling system.

Temperature swings of more than a few degrees a day can destroy your wine collection. Small temperature fluctuations from season to season will not damage the wine but those same temperature fluctuations on a daily or even weekly basis will cause your wine to age prematurely. Temperature should be maintained between 45 and 60 degrees F, and avoid direct sunlight. Thus, you can often successfully create a wine cellar in a closet and a humidity level between 50% and 80% is ideal for all types of wine.

Vibration should always be avoided when storing wine; it agitates the bottle and speeds up the chemical processes taking place inside the bottle – and not in a good way.

Vibration can become a major issue during transportation and is the reason most shippers recommend allowing your wine to rest after extended travel. This is important, too, whenever you buy wine at a winery cellar door or even from your local wine outlet. Never take the wine home and plan on drinking it without allowing it to rest. In fact, all your wines should be put immediately into your cellar.

Note that it is not just your wine which is valuable; the cellar itself will improve the value of your home. So, the bigger and better your cellar, the more the value of your house goes up as well.

Unless you live in a very cold climate a wine cellar is generally a lower temperature environment compared with its surrounding living spaces and therefore must be treated differently in relation to those spaces. If the temperature in your wine cellar suggests that it requires cooling do not attempt to cool it by using a domestic air conditioning unit. Home air conditioning removes the humidity from the air and will fast destroy your wine by drying out the corks. There are many brands of wine cellar cooling units available to cool any size wine cellar. Your wine cellar is a personal statement, and will become one of the most important areas in your home. It is the place where you can indulge your passion for fine wine and where you can display your precious acquisitions to friends and family. Discover how to build your own home wine cellar and, if you have the space, why not consider incorporating a bar and tasting area.