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 start your wine cellar construction it is important to pay attention to the position of the cupboard in relation to the rest of the house.
Avoid converting a closet against an outside wall into a wine cellar. The outside walls of your house or apartment can be subject to wide fluctuations in temperature. Choose an internal closet where your wine can be stored in a more stable atmosphere.
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 major rule when in wine storage is to avoid wide fluctuations in temperature. 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 similar to having the cork pulled in and out again 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 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 as intended, enabling it to fully develop. Higher temperatures will age wine more rapidly and cooler temperatures will slow the ageing process. Your wine will be irreversibly damaged if it is stored at a temperature above 82ºF for as little as 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 strong ... remove all the present contents (give away / auction / move them) and start with an empty closet!
Purchase some inexpensive wine racks 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 the most convenient for selecting 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment