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 can readily be converted into a mini wine cellar to store a 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.
If possible, avoid converting a closet 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 degree and the speed of any change in temperature are critical elements in successfully storing and aging wine. A gradual change of a few degrees between summer and winter won’t matter. A similar change each day will certainly cause harm to your wines by ageing them too quickly.
The major rule when you are storing your wine is to avoid wide fluctuations in temperature. You’ll notice damage of this type immediately from the stickiness that will often form 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 pulled and replaced every day. When this happens, very small quantities of wine may be pushed out along the edge of the cork 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 55º to 58ºF the wine will age gracefully, enabling it to fully develop as the winemaker intended. 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!
Adequate wine racks may be purchased quite inexpensively from hardware stores, online retailers or storage specialty shops and you’ll have a simple but very effective mini wine cellar.
Wine rack designs vary in the number of bottles they can carry; price variations have less to do with efficiency and more to do with aesthetics.
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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