Wine cellar recommendations?!
Wine cellar recommendations?
My husband and I have an older house with a fruit and vegetable room in the basement. We would like to transform this into a wine cellar. There is wooden shelving inside. Also, since most corks are not the old kind, do we need to angle the bottles a certain way if they lay down? Thanks for helping!
Answers: You should lay the bottles on their sides. This is not just for keeping the corks moist, although that is also very important (and anything worth cellaring for an extended period of time will have a classic cork closure.) Laying the bottles on their side, while keeping the cork moist, will also allow all sediment that settles out of mixture within the wine to be collected along the side facing the ground. When you remove the bottle, keep that side down and decant it to remove the sediment before drinking.
Also, make sure the humidity in the basement is appropriate for wine storage. It should be approximately 70%. If more, it can mold the corks and spoil your investment (and, more importantly, your drinking!) as long as the bottles lay flat it is ok.
some wines still have corks ,so lying flat keeps them moist.
if they dry out, air can get in and ruin it.
the shape of the bottle keeps the air at the hight point,not in the neck In my opinion. Just lay bottles flat on side to keep cork moist.
That is the most important thing to do. Building a wine cellar is a major task. I would know, since I built my own wine room in my house. It took nummerous months and was quite expensive. The reward is great, but it did take a lot more effort than I realized.
First, for you to wanting a wine cellar, you probably are serious wine collectors. You should have at least a few hundred bottles to make this effort worthwhile. If you only want to keep 20-50 bottles, you are better off buying a wine fridge, both in terms of ease of care as well as cost/effectiveness. My cellar holds 500-600, which is smaller than most of my friend's. My friends have anywhere from 2000-10000 bottles capacities. Must be nice to have that much wines.
Secondly, I assume that you are up in the north, based on having a basement. However, even in the north, you probably would want to buy a refrigerating system. You can get a simple wine refrigeratoing unit to keep the room at 50-60 degrees, or you may go all out to put an entire venting system. The reason you want to do that is wine cellar will require a certain humidity and certain temperature, if you want to keep wines for a long time. To keep a wine and age it, you need to store them in the right temperature so they do not prematurely age. Also, to keep the cork moist and not dried up, you need to keep the humidity 50-80%. Too humid and the cork may have fungal growth, too dry and it will shrink and cause air to leak in and wine to leak out.
Third, you still need to insulate. I double insulated my cellar, being in Texas. You should at least insulate at least once, even if in underground.
Fourth, you need to plan ahead. When I built my cellar, I knew from the start that it would be much smaller than I would want or need, but I did not have any other space in my house. I would at least built a cellar 50% larger than you would want. Have extra empty spaces for boxes and more shelf spaces. Believe me, you will need to have expendibility in the cellar.
Lastly, have fun. It is an exciting project. I still get a thrill every time I open my cellar to walk in. I proudly have my friends come to see and be wowed by the wine cellar. Finally, I love the feeling of knowing that I can get whatever wine I want whenever I want in seconds.. That is the most fun thing about having a wine cellar in your house. Otherwise, might as well just rent a wine storage far away.