How To Build A Mini Wine Cellar
People who are passionate about wine usually start to collect it and as the wine collection grows you begin looking for a place to store your wine collection.
A cupboard or closet can easily be turned into a mini wine cellar to store your growing wine collection.
However, before you start building your mini wine closet consider the position of the closet in relation to the rest of the house.
Avoid converting a closet located against an outside wall into a wine cellar. The outside walls of your abode can be subject to wide fluctuations in temperature from season to season. If at all possible, choose an internal closet where the temperature is likely to remain more constant.
The speed and degree of any temperature changes are critical in successfully storing and aging wine. A gradual change of a few degrees between from winter to summer won’t matter. A similar change each day will certainly cause harm to your wines by ageing them too quickly.
The number one rule when you are storing wine is to avoid large temperature fluctuations. Damage of this type will be evident immediately from the stickiness that often forms around the capsule. Over time the continual expansion and contraction of the wine will damage the integrity of the cork. It’s just like having the cork removed and replaced every day. When this happens, minute quantities of wine may be pushed out along the edge of the cork (between the cork and the bottle neck) allowing air to seep back in. Once air has come in contact with the wine the irreversible process of oxidation starts and your wine will be ruined.
At 55ºF to 58ºF the wine will age slowly, enabling it to develop fully as intended by the winemaker. Higher temperatures will age wine more rapidly and cooler temperatures will slow down the ageing process. The damage done to your wine will be irreversible if it is stored at temperatures over 82ºF even for a month.
Perhaps the most difficult part of building a mini wine cellar closet is finding other locations to store what is already in the closet!! Do not hesitate now … remove all the present contents (move them elsewhere / give away / auction them) and start out with an empty closet!
Wine racks can be purchased quite inexpensively from a hardware store, online retailer or storage shop and you’ll have a simple but very effective mini wine cellar.
Wine rack designs vary in bottle density; price variations have more to do with aesthetics than efficiency.
Individual racking makes bottle selection easy. If you place racks against only one wall of the closet there may still be floor or shelf space available for wines that you purchase by the case.
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