Wine Reviews

Wine enthusiasts have always been fiercely possessive about their wine collections and why not? It takes a lot of investment of time, effort, money and a huge dose of passion to satisfy one’s desires when one sets out to create one’s prized collection. It thus, makes perfect sense to also invest sensibly in a good wine cellar so that your carefully selected wines last as long as possible and improve in taste and texture over the years.

Wine cellar reviews categorize cellars under two categories: Residential wine cellars and Commercial or Retail Wine Cellars. Residential wine cellars are usually located almost completely underground, in order to maintain contact with ground soil. This helps in maintaining a cooling effect.

The cellar may be actively cooled i.e. it uses customized temperature and humidity control systems and are well insulated or it may be passively cooled i.e. it would use uninsulated chambers, mostly underground that use natural cooling. Passively cooled wine cellars are obviously cheaper in comparison to actively cooled cellars and are unaffected by outages. Commercial Wine Cellars mostly use underground caves that provide an excellent atmosphere for the storage of wines.

Exposed to incorrect lighting, heat and humidity wines tend to spoil easily and it is essential to maintain the right temperature as well as humidity level at the storage site. The ideal temperature would be somewhere between 45 and 65F. Lighting is an important factor in wine storage. Ultra violet rays permeating a wine bottle can easily damage the wine. It is thus essential to store your wine in the dark. Wrapping the bottles in paper also prevents spoilage and aids in regulating temperature. Vibrations can also cause damage to your drinks as they affect the ageing process of the wine, not allowing sediments to settle down. It is a good idea to keep your bottles away from any kind of heavy machinery or motors. If you’re planning to go in for a residential layout, it would be advisable to draw up a rough estimate about how many bottles you intend storing in your cellar, what different kinds of wine you would like to have in your collection, whether the room is to be used for entertainment purposes or just for storage and also how much space you have to spare for setting up your wine cellar. If you intend using racks for storage, take care that they are sturdy enough to take the weight of the stash and are also make it possible to store the bottles at a slant(on their side) in order to keep the cork moist.

Most wine cellar reviews would provide you with a list of the best wine cellar add-ons available in the market. You could find a huge variety of bottles, barrels, coolers, racks and cabinets in different materials like wood, cement and metal. It is not necessary to have a huge space for storing your wine. You could store your collection even in a tiny corner of your house, as long as it has the right conditions for suitable storage of the wine. Make note of which type of wine matures faster and which type of wine improves in flavor and bouquet with long storage. You wouldn’t want to overdo the storage bit, lest your expensive wines get spoiled and your entire effort wasted.

Having your own wine cellar ensures that you’re never out of good wine when you have unexpected guests. You can also be sure that you would have the appropriate one for any occasion and wouldn’t have to rush all over town to find a bottle of your favorite red or white, especially if it’s a vintage. Also, with wine prices increasing continuously over the years, it would definitely pay to invest now and reap the fruits later. A little bit of sensible planning and implementation can go a long way in ensuring that your “precious” ages gracefully till the time you’re ready to savor it in its best form.