Any wine lover passionate about wine usually starts to collect it and as their wine collection grows they soon begin to wonder how to store a wine collection.

A cupboard can readily be converted into a mini wine cellar to store a growing wine collection.

Before you begin building your mini wine closet consider the position of the closet in relation to the rest of the house or apartment.

Avoid converting a closet located against an outside wall into a wine cellar. From season to season the other walls of your home may be subject to wide temperature fluctuations. If at all possible, choose an internal closet where the temperature is likely to remain more constant.

The degree and the speed of any change in temperature are critical elements in successfully storing and aging wine. A gradual change of a few degrees between from winter to summer won’t matter. A similar change each day will certainly cause harm to your wines by ageing them too quickly.

The most important rule when you are storing your wine is to avoid large temperature fluctuations. Damage of this type will be evident immediately from the stickiness that often forms around the capsule. Over time, the continued expansion then contraction of the wine will damage the integrity of the cork. It’s just like having the cork pulled and replaced 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 the air is in contact with your wine the irreversible process of oxidation begins and your wine is ruined.

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. The damage done to your wine will be irreversible if it is stored at a temperature above 82ºF for even a month.

Maybe the hardest part of building a wine cellar closet is finding other locations to store what is already in the closet!! Don’t hesitate … remove all the present contents (move them elsewhere / give away / auction them) and start out with an empty closet!

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 vary in the number of bottles they can carry; price variations have less to do with efficiency and more to do with aesthetics.

Individual racking makes bottle selection easy. If you place racks against only one wall of the closet there may still be floor or shelf space available for wines that you purchase by the case.

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