When you are passionate about wine you begin collecting 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 start your wine cellar construction it is important to pay attention to the position of the cupboard in relation to the rest of the house.

Try to avoid converting a closet situated against an outside wall into a wine cellar. The outer walls of your abode can be subject to wide fluctuations in temperature from season to season. Choose an internal closet where your wine can be stored in a more stable atmosphere.

The speed and the degree of the temperature change are critical elements to successfully storing and aging wine. The gradual change of a just a few degrees between summer and winter doesn’t matter. A similar change each day will harm your wines by ageing them too rapidly.

The major rule when in wine storage is to avoid wide fluctuations in temperature. 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 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 with grace, enabling it to develop fully. Higher temperatures will age wine more rapidly and cooler temperatures will slow 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 worry about being ruthless … sell / give away / auction / move all the present contents and start with an empty space!

Buy inexpensive wine racks from a hardware store, online retailer or storage shop and you’ll have an easy and very effective mini wine cellar.

Wine rack designs vary in bottle density; price variations have more to do with appearance than efficiency.

Single racking is generally the easiest for selecting 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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