It’s a truly opulent move to build a wine cellar on your property, but will it need ventilation?
Any good wine cellar will need adequate ventilation and even climate control systems. The heat generated by the storage and aging of the wine will need to be vented from the cellar via an ‘exhaust system’. Also, the cellar will need to maintain a certain temperature and humidity level.
Read on to learn more about wine cellars, how much they cost, and how they should be maintained.
You Don’t Need To Be A Seller To Own A Cellar
The world’s largest wine cellar is so big that it must be navigated with a vehicle. It has been in operation since the late sixties and it stretches for around one hundred and twenty five miles.
You might think this cellar is located in France, or perhaps Italy – one of the leading wine-producing countries, at least. However, you’d be mistaken, as this wine cellar is actually located in Moldova.
It’s known as the Milestii Mici, a state-administered wine cellar that houses millions upon millions of bottles of wine. The wine is mostly produced using grapes that have grown around the area for thousands of years.
The cellar itself maintains optimum conditions all year round, including an adequate temperature and level of humidity. It balances around fifty-four to fifty-seven degrees, with humidity levels floating around ninety percent.
These levels are expected for the correct aging of fine wine, regardless of whether your cellar stretches for miles, or meters. Ultimately, it isn’t just the top-tier producers and sellers of wine that boast their own cellars – anybody with the upfront capital can construct one.
As we said at the opening to this article, building a wine cellar in your home is one of the most opulent moves you can make. It’s not just the cost of constructing the cellar, but also filling it – you need some serious cash to be able to make it work.
It’s estimated that the cost of building a fully-equipped underground entry-level cellar can be as much as forty thousand dollars. That’s not an all singing, all dancing example, either – it’s just enough to get you started and store a few hundred bottles.
If you’re considering the storage and aging of thousands of bottles of wine, you’ll need to put forward at least one hundred thousand dollars. It’s a very bespoke offering and is often planned on a case by case basis, so it’s hard to generate an accurate quote.
Care For The Cellar
So, once you’ve built your fantastic and expensive wine cellar, how do you maintain and care for it? In the first instance, you’ll want to ensure that the environment itself is conducive to the safe storage of thousands of bottles of fine wine.
You’ll need to install some kind of ventilation system if the cellar is of a considerable size. This will primarily feature an exhaust system that ejects a level of the hot air from the cellar itself.
The temperature in the room should float around the mid-fifties, and you’ll need a capable exhaust system to maintain that level. You’ll also need to install air conditioning, or potentially an official wine cooling system.
As the excess warm air is ejected from the cellar, you might need to inject some more cool air to keep the balance.
The humidity is also an important factor in a wine cellar, and it’s recommended that you maintain a level of around fifty to seventy percent. If your cellar is in a dry environment, you’ll need to introduce a humidifier to the room.
Alternatively, if your wine cellar is in a considerably humid environment, you’ll need to use an evaporation system to get rid of the humidity. If you follow these rules, your wine cellar will run at the correct levels, and you’ll be able to store your wine for years.
The Small Cellar
If you can’t afford a full wine cellar, or you perhaps don’t have the space, there are alternatives you can seek out. For example, you can purchase a wine fridge, or a wine closet.
These are exactly as they sound – a refrigerated unit built to store dozens of bottles of wine. They’re often high-tech, sturdy, and considerably expensive, but nowhere near the cost of a full cellar.
You’ll be paying anything from two hundred to five thousand dollars, depending on the size and capability of the fridge you want. If you throw in the cost of electricity, you’re still saving tens of thousands of dollars when compared to a full wine cellar.