Discover How To Build A Wine Cellar
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 usually starts with collecting the first bottle and eventually finding that your collection has grown to a point that you cannot store it without a 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.
Consider the following before you start building your wine 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. Those living in a mild climate you may be able to create a passive cellar that requires no cooling system.
A wine cellar is generally constructed with thicker walls. Two-by-six construction permits better insulation, allowing the cellar to remain at an even temperature. In an active wine cellar, important factors such as temperature and humidity are maintained by a climate control system.
Temperature fluctuation of more than a few degrees can 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 be maintained 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 is a major issue during the transportation 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 it home and pull the cork out 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 bigger and better your cellar, the more the value of your house goes up as well.
Unless you live in a very cold climate 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. Domestic air conditioning removes the humidity from the air and will quickly destroy your wine collection 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 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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