Build Your Own Wine Cellar
Posted by Renee on May 24th, 2009 filed in Remedies
Building a wine cellar is the ideal way to store your wine collection in best condition. Your cellar must be designed to correctly store wine as it ages, ensuring that the wine develops the complexity that winemaker intended.
Building a wine cellar at home from scratch may sound like a daunting process, but the first step that proverbially applies to climbing mountains applies also to wine cellars. 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 things to consider before you start building a wine cellar.
Temperature should be a chief consideration and also the amount of natural light. Ensure the room is well insulated – extruded polystyrene insulation is ideal. If you live in a mild climate you may be able to create a passive cellar that requires no cooling system.
A wine cellar will usually have thicker walls. Two-by-six construction permits better insulation, allowing the cellar to remain at an even temperature. In an active wine cellar, major factors such as temperature and humidity are maintained by a cooling system.
Temperature swings can quickly destroy your wine collection. Small temperature fluctuations from season to season will not damage the wine but those same fluctuations of a daily or weekly basis will cause your wine to age prematurely. Temperature should always be 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.
Your must avoid vibration when storing wine; it agitates the bottle and speeds up the chemical reactions taking place inside the bottle – and not in a good way.
The transportation of wine can become a major vibration issue and is the reason most shippers recommend allowing your wine to rest after extended travel. This is important, too, when you buy wine at a cellar door and also from your wine retailer. Never take the wine home and plan on drinking it without allowing it to rest. In fact, all wine should be put immediately into your cellar.
Remember that it is not only your wine which is valuable; the wine cellar itself will add value to your home. So the larger and better-constructed your cellar, the more the value of your house will increase.
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. Do not attempt to cool a wine cellar by installing a domestic air conditioning unit if your wine cellar requires cooling. Home air conditioning removes the humidity from the air and will fast destroy your wine by drying out the corks. There are several brands of wine cellar cooling units available that will cool any size wine cellar. Your wine cellar will become one of the most important areas in your home and will make a personal statement about you. It is the place where you will indulge your passion for collecting fine wine and where you will display your precious acquisitions. Discover how to build your own home wine cellar and, if you have the space, why not consider incorporating a bar and tasting area.
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