When you are passionate about wine you start to collect it … and when you begin collecting it you need a place to store your wine collection.
It is easy to convert a closet into a mini wine cellar to house your growing wine collection.
Before you begin converting your closet into a wine cellar consider the position of the closet relative to the rest of the house.
Avoid converting a closet against an outside wall into a wine cellar. The outer walls of your abode can be subject to wide fluctuations in temperature from season to season. Ideally, 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 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 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, 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 age wine more rapidly and cooler temperatures slow the ageing process. The damage done to your wine will be irreversible if it is stored at temperatures over 82ºF even for a month.
The most difficult part of creating a mini wine cellar in a closet can be finding other places to store the original contents of the closet! Do not hesitate … remove all the present contents (give away / auction / move them) and start 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 the number of bottles they can carry; price variations have less to do with efficiency and more to do with aesthetics.
Individual racking makes it easy to select bottles. If you place racks against only one wall of the closet you may still have floor or shelf space available for wines that you purchase by the case.
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Posted under Wine
This post was written by wine on May 24, 2009
