Cellar at home

The cellar and the pleasure of wine

Having a wine cellar inside of your house is definitely an important commitment, which at the same time, however, brings a lot of satisfaction.

For connoisseurs of wine is always a pleasure to associate the right bottle of wine to a meal, especially during a dinner be it for business or pleasure. It is reason of high pride having in our house a small cellar in which to store our precious wines.

The wine is that element that only a few other people in addition to the Italian are able to know and appreciate the fact that good wine is part of the heritage of Italy, and many are the people who lately are approaching this world.

The wine is not something trivial, it can be defined as a substance in continuous evolution, alive and to be kept in the proper way requires some shrewdness and proper care, in fact a good wine cellar to be defined as such, must meet a number of requirements, which allow us to guarantee the preservation of a good wine.

Requirements of a winery

The basement is by definition the environment destined to the appropriate storage for wine, so in addition to having to meet certain requirements is a place that has its own personality, a setting of charm that sets it apart from the other rooms of the house. Having a basement in your house and then think about where to put it but mainly as a design it must be assumed that beyond the love for wine, we must also have a good knowledge of it, precisely because we know that wine is a very delicate product and for its preservation requires environments with very precise characteristics. So we can say that to design a real wine cellar designers will surely not be a teetotaler.

The first thing to do is choose where to place our cellar, we will ensure that this is far from any source of heat, vibration-free operation of any type, it will be a place with little or no light, which has a good thermal insulation if the latter requirement should not be respected, you can use the panels of glass fiber or extruded polystyrene that may be applied to the walls and the ceiling, while on the floor would be more appropriate to achieve even a vapor barrier of at least 6-7 mm.

Another important decision concerns the floor of the cellar, the one that is most commonly used is the slate floor or tile.
Sometimes the floor in a cellar it is also found in other materials, such as linoleum or cement.

We must also consider the temperature, the ideal should be somewhere between 10 and 15°C, trying to maintain a constant level of humidity of around 70-80%, in each case the cellar environment must not have humidity below to 70%.

Concerning the importance of the environment humidity, we need to specify that, this moisture always present in cellars, has the function to compensate for the moisture inside of the bottle, limiting in this way the suction effect of the wine outwards from part of the cork.

The moisture so it is very much important for the storage of wine. The light factor is very important, in fact, adequate lighting is essential for a good wine storage.

Another important requirement relates to the coatings uses in the cellar with regard to the walls or other various elements of the cellar. Usually we prefer water paints, since in a cellar another aspect to be considered is the odor, in fact a good cellar must be odor free, if not that of wine.

Also because the wine has the property of absorbing the smells of the surrounding environment, so it is best not to use paints and coatings that can release odors.

How and where to build a wine cellar

Usually the ideal place to get a wine cellar, is the basement, because usually this environment presents all the general characteristics of a typical cellar: humidity, temperature changes, vibration, etc. .. Also the size of the environment is important, in fact at times the environment is too large and therefore must be divided building a real wall, that may be realized with bricks or tiles.

Usually for structures of this kind, even if non-load bearing we use materials that are quite heavy, it is not recommended the use of plasterboard for example because, being the cellar a rather damp place, this material would tend to absorb moisture from the air.

The cellar environment as well as having the right size, must be equipped with a door and small windows or vents. If the window is present instead we must pay attention to the quantity of incoming light reducing it as much as possible, then we must insulate well glasses to avoid thermal bridges with the outside.

Inside the environment there must then be shelves, which in this case will constitute the true and proper furnishing elements within our cellar. In deciding their placement we should also mention that the bottles of wine are to be kept horizontally. A much used and also very impressive and beautiful to behold, and one that adopts brick in terra cotta provided with a horizontal cylindrical bore within which you can place the bottle.

Useful tips when you own a winery

If the plug of your bottles in the cellar due to moisture create a little mold, do not worry, because this is not a symptom of a bad seal of the cap. A cork a bit wet, and why not, moldy, it's definitely better than a cap very dry, because this would be an indication of excessive dryness of the air in the environment.

If the humidity of the cellar is not sufficient, to increase the rate you can leave a container full of water with a handful of lime powder so as to avoid the proliferation of bacterial cultures in the water, of course the temperature of the environment and the consequent moisture content depends on the geographical location and the characteristics of the property.

In fact, you should avoid places with high temperatures, also because a high temperature could plunge the tannins and polyphenols, which are natural chemical compounds from the skins of the grapes, and that in addition to the color profile, then the color of the wine, also determine the taste and quality.

Furthermore, if at a high temperature, the wine is ages faster, with too low temperature the wine tends to lose consistency and to impoverish. So when you choose the environment to be used as a wine cellar and then you design it, you have to pay attention to this aspect.

Usually red wines prefer a temperature of 13-15°C, while the whites 10-12°C depending on the various types of wine. Obviously the temperature to be chosen will be mediated, preferring definitely a cooler temperature than a warmer.

Another trick to the positioning of the bottles of wine, as we have seen, they must be placed in a horizontal position. In fact, if the basement is also preserved these sparkling wines always in a horizontal position should be kept on the shelves at the bottom, the other wines should be kept horizontal with the neck slightly raised.

If we also keep wine with the plastic cap, those high-proof spirits, and can be kept upright.