How To Build A Wine Closet
Written by Post on December 15th, 2009 in Food & Drink.
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.
Avoid converting a closet located against an outside wall into a wine cellar. From season to season the other walls of your home may be subject to wide temperature fluctuations. Ideally, choose an internal closet where your wine will be able to be stored at a more constant temperature.
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 from winter to summer won’t matter. A similar change each day will harm your wines by ageing them too rapidly.
The most important rule when you are storing your 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 continued expansion then 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 occurs, tiny quantities of wine may be pushed out along the edge of the cork – between the cork and the neck of the bottle – allowing air to seep back in. Once the air is in contact with your wine the irreversible process of oxidation begins and your wine is 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!
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 racks makes it easy to select bottles. 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.
