Create A Mini Wine Cellar In A Closet
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
Terrific New eBook On How To Broil Delicious Foods When you are passionate about wine you start to collect 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. Consider the position of the cupboard or closet in relation to the outside walls of the house before you construct your wine cellar. It is preferable to not turn a closet built against an outside wall into a wine cellar. The outer walls of your house or apartment can frequently be subject to wide fluctuations in temperature. Select an internal closet where your wine can be stored in a stable atmosphere. 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 harm your wines by ageing them too rapidly. The most important rule when storing wine is to avoid large temperature changes or 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, very small amounts of wine may be expelled along the edge of the cork (between the cork and the neck of the bottle) allowing air to seep in. Your wine will be ruined once air comes in contact with your wine and the irreversible process of oxidation begins. 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. 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! Don’t worry about being ruthless … sell / give away / auction / move all the present contents and start with an empty space! Cheap wine racks can be purchased 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 appearance than efficiency. Single racking is generally the easiest for selecting bottles. If you have 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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