How to choose the best Wine Cellar for your home

If you are lucky enough to have your very own wine collection and it is big enough to be filling the spare gaps / corners in your home and you are getting tried of seeing wine boxes everywhere then you are probably at the stage of needing a ‘wine cellar’.

Depending on the type of wine you have, there will be certain criteria that need to be met in order to store the wine correctly and safely. There will importantly be certain questions that you need to ask yourself in order to make the right wine cellar decision for you and your wines.

Have you the space to accommodate a wine cellar?

A wine cellar will require space and this could mean a corner of a room, the garage, an outbuilding, digging downwards, converting an existing cellar and much more in ways to maximise the space you have to accommodate wines. Have you decided on the best place to store your wines?

Where the cellar is to be placed will effect the likes of how it should look (will it be on show ie in the front room / kitchen) or will it simply be out of the way and not required to be visually pleasing.

Some wine collections may need to showcase those wines that are ready for drinking now and also a separate section for those wines which are for long-term storage. Let us not forget that you may wish to have the likes of a tasting room incorporated in the wine cellar to really impress your guests!

How many bottles have you and how likely is the collection to expand?

You will need a space big enough for now and possibly your future wine collection growth! If you are a collector then the passion will certainly be in you that you might not be able to resist adding to your collection so a wine cellar solution for today might very well become outdated and a problem again if you have not calculated the correct size for your wine collecting journey.

What style of wines are you collecting?

Most professional wine storage solutions will allow you to adjust temperatures and control humidity which are important for those looking to store wines and not lose quality. Still wines and sparkling wines will all require their own set ways for storage, some solutions such as fridges will come with compartments allowing for split temperature controlling.

Why are you collecting?

If you are collecting wines for investment then the storage solution can vary compared to those of collecting wines and looking to open and enjoy them. Sometimes it may pay to be safer for those collecting for investment reasons to hold the wines at professional temperature controlled warehouses. Wines on show might not be a good idea for more valuable wines that are being stored to age and improve them as they will suffer from light / movement / changes in humidity etc.

How much are you looking to spend?

Possibly the most important factor that will decide the type of wine storage you will be choosing is your spending budget. A small wine rack on the kitchen counter to converted rooms containing thousands of bottles, the spending could be from a little as a few £ / $’s to many thousands.

Most times to will pay to place a price per bottle for your storage / wine cellar solution. The bigger the collection you have the more likely it will be that costs will increase, though you will generally find that a price of storage per bottle will remain very similar, for example a fridge at 100 bottle capacity for £100 / $120 or a large unit with a 1,000 bottle capacity at £1,000 / $1,200 (£1 / $1.20 cost per bottle).