People who are passionate about wine usually start to collect it and as the wine collection grows you begin looking for a place to store your wine collection.
A cupboard or closet can easily be turned into a mini wine cellar to store your growing wine collection.
However, before you start building your mini wine closet consider the position of the closet in relation to the rest of the house.
Try not to convert a closet against an outside wall into your new wine cellar. From season to season the other walls of your home may be subject to wide temperature fluctuations. If at all possible, 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 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 air comes into contact with your wine the process of oxidation begins 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 will age wine more rapidly and cooler temperatures will slow down the ageing process. The damage done to your wine will be irreversible if it is stored at temperatures over 82ºF even for a month.
Perhaps the most difficult part of building a mini wine cellar closet is finding other locations to store what is already in the closet!! Don’t hesitate … remove all the present contents (give away / auction / move them) and begin 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 racks makes it easy to select bottles. 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.
