How to Build a Wine Cellar in Your Basement
What’s the oldest wine in the world? Dating back to 325 A.D., the Speyer wine bottle is the oldest bottle of wine. Discovered inside the grave of a nobleman in 1867, the wine has never been opened. Can you imagine the bold flavors and aromatic experience such an ancient bottle could deliver? If you’re a wine enthusiast, then you’re in the right place. This article will discuss how you can bring the joys of a wine cellar into the comfort of your home. Read on to learn how to build a wine cellar in your basement, the right way!
Preparing Your Home
Before you can learn how to build a wine cellar in your basement, you’ll first need to decide what type of cellar you want to create. For instance, do you mainly want your wine cellar to be an area for storage?
Were you planning on having the wine cellar be an opportunity to show off your wine collection? Of course, you can always go for the best of both worlds, creating a space that entertains guests as well as stores wine properly.
Get Creative
Before you start building a basement wine cellar, decide if your basement is actually the location you want to use. Basements are a wonderful location for wine cellars since the climate is cool. However, if you’re willing to do a little bit of extra work you can put your wine cellar anywhere.
For example, you could convert a small closet space into a wine cellar. Take a moment to think about the available space you have in your home.
What locations could you imagine a wine cellar being in? Next, keeping your objective in mind, decide how much wine you want to put in your wine cellar.
Lastly, create a realistic budget so that you can make your vision a reality. When you consider the cost of a wine cellar, you might choose to keep things small.
Mistakes to Avoid
Earlier, we mentioned that you can convert practically any space in your residence into a wine cellar, with the proper planning. However, what does proper planning mean?
For starters, you’ll need the wine to be stored in an area that is dark most of the time. A common mistake that wine enthusiasts make when building their first seller is to store the wine in an area that direct sunlight can’t enter.
Direct sunlight is the mortal enemy of delicious wine, degrading it and stealing its aromatic powers. Next, another newbie mistake is to stack the bottles upright. You probably noticed in other wine cellars that the wine racks are designed to keep the bottles laying gently on their sides.
The reason for laying wine bottles on the side primarily has to do with the wine cork. When the bottle is laying on its side, the wine can touch the cork, keeping it moist. Without the wet wine touching the cork, it can dry up and fall apart when you open the bottle.
Lastly, take into consideration how you will be organizing your wine cellar. We suggest making your wine space organized in a way that has different levels of access. For instance, one level of your wine cellar can be for everyday wines. Whereas, another level could be for special showpiece bottles. Separating the wines will serve 2 purposes.
For one, your wine cellar will look sleeker when it’s organized. Secondly, you’ll also be avoiding a situation where somebody in your house accidentally drinks a special wine, thinking it’s an everyday wine.
Wouldn’t it be awful? coming home, and realizing that bottle of wine you saved for 10 years was gone? You can avoid this kind of disaster by simply placing the special bottles in a VIP section of your cellar.
Getting to Work
Now, you’re ready to get into the finer details of what it takes to build a wine cellar. Since you’ve already chosen your location and organizational structure, it’s time to check for the location leaks. Take your time ensuring that the room your cellar will be in is hermetically sealed.
There shouldn’t be any type of air leaks that could possibly ruin your wine. Next, you’ll need to install a vapor barrier. You can buy vapor barrier plastic sheets and put them behind the insulation, laying on the warm side of the wall.
The cold side of the wall should be the interior of the wine cellar. The vapor barrier will protect both the cold and warm sides of the insulation. Moving on, you also need to seal the floor. It’s best to avoid putting your wine cellar in a room that has carpet or wood floors. Instead, concrete makes for the very best wine cellar flooring.
However, since concrete is very porous you’ll need to seal it first. Moving on, you’ll need to start furring the walls. Using thin pieces of wood called furring strips, you’ll be leveling and raising surfaces to prevent dampness in the insulation. Lastly, you’ll need to decide what wine cellar door you want.
 Keeping Things Cool
After you have the wine cellar door in place and you’ve checked for air leaks, you’ll need to create some type of cooling system.
There’s a variety of options when it comes to cooling your wine cellar. For instance, you can get cooling units that help maintain humidity levels in the proper range.
By keeping humidity levels at an ideal level you won’t have to worry about bringing in any additional dehumidification equipment. As long as you have your insulation properly installed, your wine will be safe and ready to sip.
Know How to Build a Wine Cellar in Your Basement
Now you know how to build a wine cellar in your basement, or even a closet! As long as the location is dark, and you take the proper steps to keep it cool, your cellar is going to be a success. After reading this article, what type of one cellar do you think you want to build?
Whatever direction you choose to go, remember to set a budget before you start building. For more tips like these, check out the rest of this site.
