Building a wine cellar at home is the perfect way to store a wine collection. A cellar should be designed to correctly store wine as it ages, ensuring that the wine develops complexity and depth and does not spoil.
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 all begins with collecting the first bottle and eventually finding that your collection has grown so large that you can no longer store it.
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.
Cellar temperature should be a chief consideration and also the amount of natural light. Your wine room must be well insulated – extruded polystyrene is ideal insulation. If you live in a mild climate you may be able to create a passive cellar that doesn't require any cooling system.
A wine cellar is usually built with 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 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.
When storing wine all vibration should be avoided; it agitates the bottles and speeds up the chemical reactions taking place inside the bottle – and not in a desirable 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 also important whenever you buy wine from a winery or even from your local wine outlet. Never take it home and immediately pull the cork out without allowing it to return to a rested state. In fact, all your wines should be put immediately into your cellar.
It should be noted 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. Several popular brands of wine cellar cooling units are available that will cool any sized 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.
