Discover How To Build A Wine Cellar

Building your own wine cellar is the best way to age your 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 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.

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.

There are several things to consider before you start building a 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 create a passive 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 (as opposed to passive) wine cellar, the temperature and humidity are maintained by a climate control system.

Temperature swings can quickly 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 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.

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 is a major issue during the transportation and is the reason winemakers recommend allowing your wine to rest after travel. This is also important whenever you buy wine from a winery 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 wine 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 better-constructed and larger your cellar, the more the value of your house goes up as well.

A wine cellar generally has a lower temperature environment compared with the surrounding living areas and therefore must be treated differently in relation to those areas. If your wine cellar 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 is a personal statement, and will become one of the most important areas in your home. It is the space for you to indulge your passion for wine collecting and where you will display your latest 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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