The Wine Fact Center

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.

Before you begin converting your closet into a wine cellar consider the position of the closet relative to the rest of the house.

Avoid converting a cupboard against an outside wall into a wine closet. 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 degree and the speed of any change in temperature are critical elements in successfully storing and aging wine. The gradual change of a just a few degrees between summer and winter doesn’t matter. The same 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. You’ll be aware of this damage straight away from the sticky deposit that often forms around the capsule. Over a period of time the continual contraction and expansion 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. 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 properly, enabling it to fully develop. Higher temperatures will age wine more rapidly and cooler temperatures will slow down the ageing process. Irreversible damage will be done if your wine is kept at a temperature above 82ºF for even 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 hesitate … get rid of all the present contents (one way or another) and start with a blank slate!

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.

Individual racking makes it easy to select 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.