BKC Solutions Corner

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 scratch may seem like a daunting process, but the first step that proverbially applies to climbing mountains applies to wine cellars, too. 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.

A well-constructed wine cellar can cost many thousands of dollars but so can a large refrigerated wine cabinet so often a custom built wine cellar at home 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 should be a chief consideration and also the amount of natural light. Ensure the room is well insulated – extruded polystyrene insulation is ideal. If you reside in a mild climate it may be possible for you to create a passive cellar that requires no cooling system.

A wine cellar is generally constructed with thicker walls. Two-by-six construction allows for better insulation, allowing the cellar to remain at a constant temperature. In an active wine cellar, important factors such as temperature and humidity are maintained by a climate control system.

Temperature swings of more than a few degrees a day 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 remain constant between 45 degrees and 60 degrees F, and always avoid exposure to 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.

Your must avoid vibration when storing wine; it agitates the bottle and speeds up the chemical reactions taking place inside the bottle – and not in a good 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 also important whenever you buy wine from a winery or even from your local wine outlet. Never take it home and immediately pull the cork out without allowing it to return to a rested state. 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 better-constructed and larger 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. 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 place where you can indulge your passion for fine wine and where you can display your precious acquisitions to friends and family. Discover how to build your own home wine cellar and, if you have the space, why not consider incorporating a bar and tasting area.