I’ve been back and forth about doing a cellar, but as I recently renovated my home I have a perfect enclave for one in my basement. I took a temp reading in the winter and in the summer and it seems to vacillate b/w 62 and 65 degrees. I was hoping to be able to pull this thing off w/o having to invest in climate control for the obvious financial reasons and as there are people in this forum who have infinitely more experience cellaring wine than do I, I was hoping for some feedback/reccos.
My personal belief is many believe wine to be much more finicky than it truly is and as long as there is a consistent temp and not huge humidity issues, things tend to work out alright (with the caveat that warmer temps age the wine more quickly). To the extent that it matters I do have a decent number of wines which are age worthy and could be in there in 10-30 yrs given the appropriate conditions.
+1 basically more than age worthy, since probably a lot of them will be. Maybe all the bottles above a price point. As you run out of storage, price point to be in the premium fridge goes up.
So I just did a home wine cellar and included a cooling unit. I have a fair number of old age-worthy wines, and have invested enough in the bottles that I did not want to take a risk. I do think my natural fluctuations would have been greater than yours (though still not terrible).
Having said that, I would not worry too much about a 62-65 move. My sense is the same as yours – it is changes in temp, more than absolute temp, that is of concern. Your cellar will be a bit warmer, and thus your wines may age a bit faster. I am sure there are some empirical studies out there about how much faster they might age.
FWIW, I do think the wine fridge idea is a good idea if you have high priced or special wines. I also think building it to easily add a cooler unit later if budget allows, is also a good idea.
It’s actually not so much changes as the actual temps. Also people have this idea that slow changes are better than fast ones but there’s no science that I’ve ever seen to back that up. A change is a change, no matter how fast or slow it is. The idea is that air expands and contracts, possibly moving the cork.
But I agree that the change of a few degrees isn’t really of that much concern with the small amount of air in the bottle.
Were I building a cellar, I’d put in some provision for cooling. It can be a very small room AC if you need one, but I’d run the line and leave a cut-out for it. You never know if you’ll get a freakishly hot year or something and it would be good to have the additional cooling capacity. ANd you can even vent it into the rest of the basement - it’s not going to run constantly and won’t put out that much heat.
But your temp, if it really is what you say, isn’t really all that bad. In fact there are many warehouses full of wine and they’re not much colder than that.
I’d bet that with some good insulation you could keep it at 62 or less all year around. As Greg said, at least a small cooling unit might be beneficial, and it might allow you to keep it at “ideal” temp if your insulation was good.
I built my mainly passive cellar with R30 in the walls and ceiling. Door is R13 and floor is concrete without a moisture seal and with tile on top. I left space for a cooler unit and designed a cutout for it if needed, with power on the outside wall for it if needed. (Though so far I haven’t.)
Humidity is low in my basement and I control air temps by putting 7-8 lbs of ice in the cellar nightly. The ice melt provides humidity and gives my citrus a drink nightly when I change it. I googled and found highest soil temps were 64°F in the summer and not too much cooler in the winter. This summer the fluctuation on air temps has been 63.9 - 64.8, with it generally staying at 64.2.
I am clearly in the 64 degrees is fine for wine camp, and am in the avoid frequent temp swings camp. From what you say about the air temperature fluctuations, you could easily go passive. I would find out what the ground temperatures are for your area, and that is likely to be what your wine will stay at with appropriate insulation.
7 years, no mold. My issue is getting humidity above 40% in the summer. Doesn’t seem like a chore to do. Definitely easier than cleaning a cat box every night. Water bill? I fill up up two 4 pint containers and put them in the freezer. The meltwater goes into a tree bucket and a different fruit tree gets watered every night. So the water gets two uses out of it.
Not sure how much space you have but you would be surprised at how cheaply you can blow closed cell foam in a space, install a cooling unit and put in racks. I had a framed-out room in my basement and made those alterations for less than $4k and now have 2000+ bottles in it.