Designing Your Own Wine Cellar
When you are passionate about wine you begin collecting it. It could be you sign on to a monthly wine club and now are getting valuable wines. As your collection increases over time storing it can become a problem. A cabinet can without difficulty be adapted into a perfectly functioning diy wine cellar to protect your growing wine collection.
Constructing a wine cellar requires plenty of planning and consideration, don’t leave this important step out. For instance where is the closet in relation to the rest of the house? Avoid converting a closet against an outside wall into a wine cellar. You don’t have to make your life more difficult, ouside walls change in temperature as the year progresses, select an inside wall to avoid this headache. Choose an internal closet where your wine can be stored in a more stable atmosphere.
The level and amount of temperature changes is very important to storing your wine properly. Shifting temperatures during the seasons will have no affect on the wine aging, as long as it stays within safe levels. Spoiled wine will result if this process continues for a time. A very important factor when aging your wine is to stay away from wide variations in the temperature.
You can’t miss the damage that is caused. Look for the sticky deposit that often forms around the capsule. Your cork will become brittle and fragile as the wine continues to expand and contract. You could compare it to corking your wine each time the temperature changes. When this happens, minute quantities of wine may be pushed out along the edge of the cork allowing air to seep back in. Oxidation is what happens when the wine meets the air, it cannot be stopped or reversed. Your wine is ruined. Wine ages best between the temperatures of 56-59 degrees. Higher temperatures will age wine more rapidly and cooler temperatures will slow down the ageing process. Irreversible damage will be done if your wine is kept at a temperature above 82ºF for even a month.
Instal something to seal the cellar to prevent moisture from building up. Mold like the humid environments that are good for wine. Also it’s a good idea to get a high quality wine cellar cooler for controlling the humidity and temperature.
Next comes the construction phase. Designing a wine cellar builds the value of your wine! You will need to purchase a few essential items. You can get some cheap wine racks from a hardware store. With some cheap racks you’ll have a simple but very effective mini wine cellar. Wine rack designs will vary in bottle density. Price variations are more to do with aesthetics than efficiency. Individual racking is the most convenient for selecting bottles.
Make your wine cellar with scalability in mind, only put the racks on one side, leaving the other side empty. Then you may still have floor or shelf space available for wines that you purchase by the case. A budget is no problem if you want to construct a custom wine cellar. Go for function over design to save money. Let your wine speak for itself.
Now you can truly enjoy the luxury of owning your own wine cellar and aging your own wine!