Building A Wine Cellar At Home
Building your own wine cellar is the best way to age your wine collection. 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 all begins with collecting the first bottle and eventually finding that your collection has grown so large that you can no longer store it.
The cost of a well-constructed wine cellar can run to many thousands of dollars but so can a large capacity refrigerated wine cabinet, so you may find that a custom-built home wine cellar can be the most economical and cost effective way of storing your wine.
Consider the following before you start building your 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.
Wine cellars generall have thicker walls. Two-by-six construction allows for better insulation, allowing the cellar to remain at a constant temperature. In an active (as opposed to passive) wine cellar, the temperature and humidity are maintained by a climate control system.
Temperature swings of more than a few degrees a day can destroy your wine collection. Small temperature fluctuations from summer to winter will not damage the wine but those same fluctuations on a daily or weekly basis will cause your wine to age prematurely. Temperature should remain constant between 45 degrees and 60 degrees F, and always avoid exposure to 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.
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 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 wine should be immediately placed in 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 bigger and better your cellar, the more the value of your house goes up as well.
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 will remove the humidity from the air and will quickly destroy your wines by causing the corks to dry out. Several popular brands of wine cellar cooling units are available that will cool any sized 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 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.
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