Wine Storage Solutions for your Home
It is always a dream of mine to have a dedicated area for my wines at home. A few years ago I was living in France and the small village house we had boasted a cellar and I had my very own bar that one or two neighbours popped in to for a glass or two of the local wine – Today I have a much better understanding of wines and certainly a much large collection so having them correctly stored and easily accessible is an important factor when doing my property searches online.
There are many great solutions for storing wine at home from integrated wine coolers to innovative temperature controlled cellars dug down in to any ground floor room of the house.
Important factors for storing wine correctly:
- Temperature: Not all wines require the same storage temperature, though this will be mostly to enhance the ageing of the wines. If you are looking to store wines for everyday consumption the 53-55°F is a safe guide.
- Light: It is a good idea to keep your wines out of direct bright lights including daylight / sun rays. Being stored in more or less complete darkness is fine as well as a shielded protection from light damage – It is not required that wines should be stored in total darkness.
- Humidity: Your wines should be stored where it’s humid, but not overly humid – A higher humidity will prevent the corks from shrinking and allowing oxygen to enter the bottle of wine and causing damage / corkage.
- Vibrations/movement: It is better to keep wines undisturbed as much as possible.
- Positioning: Cork closed bottles are best to remain stored lying down rather than standing up as you want to keep the cork moist and expanded to not allow oxygen to enter the bottle – Wines that are stored standing up will usually have a dried cork after time and more likely to go bad (screw cap wines are not required to be stored laying down).
Cellar
For any wine enthusiast it is always best to have a cellar at home as they will offer usually the best all round storage condition for wines in that they are cool, dark, humid, less likely to have any day to day damage / moving about risks.
Cellars can easily be converted in to wine storage solutions from a simple pine rack in the corner to professional shelving units such as the Modulosteel from Eurocaves:
Walk in Wine Cellar
If you haven’t a cellar at home and you do not wish to start digging down then a walk in style cellar is a great option. These can be added within an existing room or indeed as part of an extension to your property / within an outbuilding.
Cooler / Fridge / Cabinet
There are many great chilled storage solutions for wines at home to include free standing chillers to integrated mini chiller in that dream fitted kitchen.
Just how much they stand out though will depend on your budget – Some of the more costly and eye catching for those special homes that enjoy having their very own bar area include:
Room conversion / Dedicated wine room
A popular solution for those more bigger homes is to convert a room in to your wine cellar. Some amazing solutions are on the market where oak racking systems are used and they can add real value to a home.
Under floor option
You can also make space by digging down on ground floor rooms with the kitchen being the usual choice. Adding a secret and visible mini wine storage that is properly chilled in order to store your wines will add a real charm to your property.
Solutions include from Spiral Cellars internationally.
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