The best way to store a growing wine collection is to build a home wine cellar. Your 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 home 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 at home without a cellar.

A well-insulated home wine cellar can cost many thousands of dollars to build but so can a large refrigerated wine cabinet so often a walk-in home wine cellar is the more economical and cost effective way of storing your wine.

Before you start building your home wine cellar consider the following.

Temperature must be a first consideration plus strictly limiting the amount of natural light. Make sure the room is well insulated – extruded polystyrene insulation is ideal. Those living in a mild climate you may be able to create a passive cellar that requires no cooling system.

A wine cellar will usually have thick walls. Two-by-six construction permits better insulation, allowing the cellar to remain at an even temperature. In an active (as opposed to passive) wine cellar, the 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 summer to winter will not damage the wine but those same fluctuations on a daily or weekly basis will cause your wine to age prematurely. Temperature should always be between 45 and 60 degrees F, and avoid direct sunlight. It is possible to build a wine closet or a wine cupboard at home that will have the required humidity level of between 50% and 80% that is ideal for all types of wines.

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 can become a major issue during transportation and is the reason most shippers recommend allowing your wine to rest after extended travel. This is important, too, whenever you buy wine at a winery cellar door or even from your local wine outlet. Never take it home and pull the cork out without allowing it to rest. In fact, all your wines should be put immediately into your cellar.

It should be noted 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.

A wine cellar generally maintains a lower temperature compared to its surrounding living spaces and therefore must be treated differently in relation to those spaces. Should your wine cellar require cooling do not install a domestic air conditioning unit. Home air conditioning removes the humidity from the air and will quickly destroy your wine collection by drying out the corks. There are several brands of wine cellar cooling units available that will cool any size wine cellar. Your wine cellar is a personal statement, and will become one of the most important areas in your home. This is the place where you can indulge your passion for fine wine and where you can display your precious acquisitions to friends and family. Click here to discover how to build a home wine cellar and, if you have the space, you could try incorporating a bar or a wine tasting area.

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  3. How To Store Wine In A Compact Wine Refrigerator
  4. Wine Cellar Cooling Units – What Kind Is Best For You?
  5. How To Host A Wine Tasting

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