Anyone passionate about wine usually starts to collect it and as their wine collection grows they must begin looking for a place to store a wine collection.
It is easy to convert a closet into a mini wine cellar to house your growing wine collection.
Before you begin building your mini wine closet consider the position of the closet in relation to the rest of the house or apartment.
Avoid converting a closet located against an outside wall into a wine cellar. The outer walls of your home can be subject to wide seasonal temperature fluctuations in temperature. 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 harm your wines by ageing them too rapidly.
The number one rule when you are storing wine is to avoid large temperature fluctuations. 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 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 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 a temperature above 82ºF for even a month.
Maybe the hardest part of building a wine cellar closet is finding other locations to store what is already in the closet!! Don’t hesitate … remove all the present contents (move them elsewhere / give away / auction them) and start out 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 bottle selection easy. If you place racks against only one wall of the closet you should still have space available on the floor or shelves to store wines purchased by the case … these wines should remain strored in their cartons.
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