Good article about storing wine...

[Anthony]

Building a Wine Cellar - MSN Lifestyle - The Wine Life

Building a Wine Cellar
By Sam Gugino


While the vast majority of wine is consumed within the first year or two of bottling, the great wines of the world take their blessed time before they can be fully appreciated. Thus, the wine cellar.

Don't be fooled by the name; you don't need to have a basement or a fortune to start your own wine cellar. To begin with, the word "cellar" is used very loosely. It can be no more than a closet in your apartment. Or, as Leon D. Adams put it in The Commonsense Book of Wine (McGraw-Hill) "a chest drawer, or the corner of the cupboard, or a cool spot under the basement stairs."

Where is not the issue, but how the cellar is maintained is another matter. The temperature should ideally be around 55 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, which is about what most underground cellars are. Most homes and apartments are closer to 70 degrees. This doesn't mean the wines will spoil but it does mean they will age faster than if kept at cooler temperatures.

The exact temperature may be less important than the consistency of temperature. If the temperature zooms to 75, then drops back to 55 and goes up to 75 again, the wine will be more likely to be shocked and damaged. One way to mitigate the effects of fluctuation is to pack wines tightly together. The increased mass of tightly packed wines means that they will warm up more slowly and cool down more slowly.

Because wall thermometers only measure the temperature of the air, Harvey Steiman in his book Essentials of Wine (Wine Spectator Press) suggests inserting a thermometer with a long spike (such as an instant-read food thermometer) into a bottle of cheap wine to find out what the exact temperature of the product is.

Fruits of labor
The humidity of your wine cellar should be sufficient to keep corks from drying out. The ideal humidity for a wine cellar is about 75 percent. Humidifiers can increase the humidity of an otherwise dry storage space. One reason why a refrigerator is not a good long-term storage place is that while it cools, it also removes moisture.

Light is another enemy of wine. Your wine cellar (closet, whatever) should be kept dark unless you need to fish out a bottle. And then the light source should not be florescent. Ultraviolet light is deadly for wine.

(There are wine-cellar cabinets that maintain constant temperature and humidity and hold from several dozen to several hundred bottles at a cost of several hundred to several thousand dollars. They're available through many wine magazines and wine-accessory catalogues.)

Two other characteristics of a good wine cellar are freedom from vibration and good ventilation.

If you have to decide on where to put your money, put it on climate control because the shelving where the wine rests can be as rudimentary as the cardboard cases in which the wines are shipped. Just tear off one end of the box and you have a ready-made bin that holds 12 bottles of wine, each conveniently separated from the other.

You can also buy wine racks rather inexpensively. There are also modules that allow you to keep adding bins as your wine cellar grows.

The wines should lie horizontally, on their sides, not upside down. Have the necks of the bottles facing you with the labels facing upward so it's easy to see at a glance what the wines are.

Keeping track
Before you begin stocking your cellar it's a good idea to have a buying strategy that corresponds to what you drink. After all, it doesn't make much sense to stock up on Barolos if you don't like them.

Your inventory should also be balanced. It should have a mix of everyday wines; wines that are drinkable now but reserved for the weekend or when you entertain; special-occasion wines; and wines that are not to be touched for a certain period of time.

Keeping track of what you buy and store is almost as important as how you store it. One reason for records is that they prevent you from overlooking a wine that passed its peak while sitting unnoticed in your cellar. An inventory system also enables you to pick the right wine for the right occasion easily. This can be in the form of a handwritten book or the myriad of computer software programs now available.

The inventory system should indicate the wine and winery, color, region, appellation, special designation (such as a single vineyard), vintage, number of bottles, storage location, date purchased (and perhaps where), and purchase price. It should also have a space for comments such as how the wine has been