The best way to store your valuable wine collection so it ages properly is to build a home wine cellar. Your cellar must be built to store wine correctly as it ages, ensuring that the wine develops the complexity that winemaker intended.

Building a home wine cellar from the ground up – or more likely, from the basement up – may seem like an overwhelming task, but that proverbial first step is usually the most difficult. It usually starts with collecting the first bottle and eventually finding that your collection has grown to a point that you cannot store it at home without a cellar.

The cost of a well-constructed wine cellar can run to many thousands of dollars but so can a large capacity refrigerated wine cabinet, so you may find that building your own wine cellar can be the most economical and cost effective way of storing your wine.

Before you start building a wine cellar there are several things to consider.

Cellar temperature should be a chief consideration followed by the amount of natural light. Your wine room must be well insulated – extruded polystyrene provides ideal insulation. If you live in a mild climate you may be able to create a passive cellar that requires no cooling system.

A wine cellar will usually have thick walls. Two-by-six construction will allow for substantial insulation, allowing the cellar to remain at a constant temperature. In an active (as opposed to passive) wine cellar, the temperature and humidity are maintained by a climate control system.

Temperature fluctuation of more than a few degrees can destroy your wine collection. Small temperature fluctuations from season to season will not damage the wine but those same fluctuations of a daily or weekly basis will cause your wine to age prematurely. Temperature should be maintained between 45 and 60 degrees F, and avoid direct sunlight. It is possible to build a wine closet or a wine cupboard at home that will have the required humidity level of between 50% and 80% that is ideal for all types of wines.

Your must avoid vibration when storing wine; it agitates the bottle and speeds up the chemical reactions taking place inside the bottle – and not in a good way.

Vibration is a major issue during the transportation and is the reason most shippers recommend allowing your wine to rest after extended travel. This is important, too, when you buy wine at a cellar door or even from your local wine retailer. Never take it home and pull the cork out without allowing it to rest. In fact, all wine should be put immediately into your cellar.

Note that it is not just your wine which is valuable; the cellar itself will improve the value of your home. So the better-constructed and larger your cellar, the more the value of your house goes up as well.

A wine cellar generally requires a lower temperature than the surrounding living areas and therefore must be treated differently in relation to those areas. Should your wine cellar require cooling do not install a domestic air conditioning unit. Home air conditioning removes the humidity from the air and will fast destroy your wine by drying out the corks. Several popular brands of wine cellar cooling units are available that will cool any sized wine cellar. Your wine cellar is a personal statement, and will become one of the most important areas in your home. This is the place where you will indulge your passion for collecting fine wine and where you will display your precious acquisitions. Click here to discover how to build a home wine cellar and, if you have the space, you could try incorporating a bar or a wine tasting area.