When you are passionate about wine you begin collecting it … and when you begin collecting it you need a place to store it.
A closet can easily be turned into a mini wine cellar to store your growing wine collection.
Before you construct your wine cellar consider the position of the closet in relation to the rest of the house.
It is preferable to not turn a closet built against an outside wall into a wine cellar. The outside walls of your house or apartment can often be subject to wide fluctuations in temperature from summer to winter. Ideally, choose an internal closet where your wine will be able to be stored at a more constant temperature.
The speed and the degree of the temperature change are critical elements to 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 hurt your wines and age them too quickly.
The most important rule when you are storing your wine is to avoid large temperature fluctuations. You’ll be aware of this damage straight away from the sticky deposit 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 like having the cork pulled in and out again every day. When this occurs, tiny quantities of wine can be pushed out along the edge of the cork (between the cork and the bottle neck) 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 55º to 58ºF the wine will age gracefully, enabling it to fully develop as the winemaker intended. Higher temperatures will age wine more rapidly and cooler temperatures will 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.
The most difficult part of creating a wine cellar in a closet can be finding other places to store the original contents of the closet! Be ruthless … get rid of all the present contents (one way or another) and start with a blank slate!
Wine racks can be purchased cheaply from a hardware store, online retailer or storage shop and you’ll have a simple but very effective mini wine cellar.
Wine rack designs will vary in bottle density; price variations are more to do with aesthetics than efficiency.
Individual racking is usually considered the most convenient way of storing 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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