Convert A Closet To A Wine Cellar
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.
It is preferable to not turn a closet built against an outside wall into a wine cellar. The outside walls of your house or apartment can often be subject to wide fluctuations in temperature from summer to winter. 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 notice damage of this nature 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 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. Once air comes in contact with your wine the irreversible process of oxidation will begin and your wine will be ruined.
At 55º to 58ºF the wine will age as the winemaker intended, enabling it to fully develop. Higher temperatures will age wine more rapidly and cooler temperatures will slow the ageing process. Irreversible damage will occur if your wine is stored at a temperature above 82ºF for a month or more.
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! Be strong … sell / give away / auction / move all the present contents and start with an empty space!
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 will vary in bottle density; price variations are more to do with aesthetics than efficiency.
Individual racking is generally thought to be the most convenient way of storing and selecting your 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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