Any wine lover passionate about wine usually starts to collect it and as their wine collection grows they soon begin to wonder how to store a wine collection.
A closet or cupboard can easily be turned into a mini wine cellar to store 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.
If possible, avoid converting a closet against an outside wall into a wine cellar. The outer walls of your home can be subject to wide seasonal temperature fluctuations in temperature. 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 certainly cause harm to your wines by ageing them too quickly.
The major rule when you are storing your wine is to avoid wide fluctuations in temperature. 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 removed and replaced every day. When this happens, minute quantities of wine may be pushed out along the edge of the cork (between the cork and the bottle neck) allowing air to seep back in. Once air comes into contact with your wine the process of oxidation begins and your wine will be 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 bottle density; price variations have more to do with aesthetics than efficiency.
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.