Building a wine cellar is the ideal way to store your wine collection in best condition. A wine cellar must be designed to store wine in the right conditions as it ages, ensuring that the wine does not spoil and that it develops complexity.

Building your own wine cellar from scratch may seem like a daunting process, but the first step that proverbially applies to climbing mountains applies to wine cellars, too. It starts when you collect your first bottle of wine and soon you'll find that your collection has grown so large that it requires its own wine cellar.

The cost of a well-constructed wine cellar can run to many thousands of dollars but so can a large capacity refrigerated wine cabinet, so you may find that a custom-built home wine cellar can be the most economical and cost effective way of storing your wine.

Consider the following before you start building your wine cellar.

Temperature should be a chief consideration and also the amount of natural light. Your wine room must be well insulated – extruded polystyrene is ideal insulation. If you live in a mild climate you may be able to create a passive cellar that requires no cooling system.

A wine cellar will usually have thicker walls. Two-by-six construction permits better insulation, allowing the cellar to remain at an even temperature. In an active wine cellar, major factors such as temperature and humidity are maintained by a cooling system.

Temperature swings can destroy your wine collection. Small temperature fluctuations from season to season will not damage the wine but those same temperature fluctuations on a daily or even weekly basis will cause your wine to age prematurely. Temperature should always be between 45 and 60 degrees F, and avoid direct sunlight. Thus, you can often successfully create a wine cellar in a closet and a humidity level between 50% and 80% is ideal for all types of wine.

When storing wine all vibration should be avoided; it agitates the bottles and speeds up the chemical reactions taking place inside the bottle – and not in a desirable way.

Vibration can become a major issue during transportation and is the reason most shippers recommend allowing your wine to rest after extended travel. This is important, too, when you buy wine at a cellar door or even from your local wine retailer. Never take it home and pull the cork out without allowing it to rest. In fact, all your wines should be put immediately into your cellar.

Remember that it is not just your wine collection which is valuable; the wine cellar itself will increase the value to your home. So the larger and better-constructed your cellar, the more the value of your house will increase.

A wine cellar is generally a lower temperature environment compared with its surrounding living spaces and therefore must be treated differently in relation to those spaces. Should your wine cellar require cooling do not install a domestic air conditioning unit. Home air conditioning removes the humidity from the air and will quickly destroy your wine collection by allowing the corks to dry out. There are many brands of wine cellar cooling units available to cool any size wine cellar. Your wine cellar makes a personal statement about you, and will become the most important area in your home. It is the space for you to indulge your passion for wine collecting and where you will display your latest acquisitions. Discover how to build your own home wine cellar and, if you have the space, why not consider incorporating a bar and tasting area.

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