Lassek, if adding a wine fridge, be careful how close it is to the rest of the wines in passive. Not sure how much warm air those displace to cool the condenser on the wine fridge. Don’t want it to heat up your cellar.
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^pretty much this.
To put it into reference, for nearly a decade I used my mom’s unfinished basement for passive storage. It was slightly colder than what you listed, but there were two big floods that KO’d the HVAC at different points during Chicago summers. Just the other night I opened an 04 Rancia that had been in that cellar and now my apartment since I bought it in 08 and it was fresh as a daisy with plenty of years of life ahead if I hadn’t drunk it. I’ve had a couple of clunkers, but on the whole, nearly every bottle I aged for over a decade in that “cellar” has been just fine.
Good point!
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I do the same as well: passive cellar that gets down to around 12 oC / 54 F in the coldest part of the winter, and climbs up to around 18 oC / 64 F in the warmest part of the summer. Fully under ground, and always dark. Humidity and temperature are measured, just to check every now and then. It’s really gradual, no day-to-day variations, and works well for me. Wine is in there around 15 years (Bordeaux). I also have a wine fridge, but honestly not even sure that I would replace it if it would break.
For just a few years, I’d be quite happy to have this option.
In case it wasn’t a typo, I think Brent meant to write north, not south.
Lots of good feedback thanks.
Maybe i will see if i can find a solution, that only runs from June-August, that will keep it below 65 without temperature swings. It is not a large cellar and it is also used for other things, so i have to convince my wife as well.
There are some very informative past threads about passive cellars in the archives. I ended up insulating the hollow core door to my passive under the staircase cellar in my finished basement.
Since it’s next to my machine room, I’m planning to replace my standard water heater to a heat pump water heater to gain some additional cooling benefits from it.
Lasse, my passive cellar runs about 59-68, however, in the summer I add 7-8 lbs of ice (@3.5K) nightly to keep the temperature at or below 65. The only issue I see with that is humidity, which is not a problem in sunny California.
Yes. I assumed that was what he meant by south-facing.
I’ve had my passive cellar for about 10 years now. It is simply the finished half of my midwest basement. In the summer I pipe the AC down there and it never gets above 65F. In the winter I don’t allow any heat down there at it bottoms out at about 52F (only during the coldest winters; I think it’s 55 now). I have no fear for any of my wines however long I want to keep them down there. A good buddy of mine had a very similar setup with his 6000 bottle cellar and I had more surprising and amazing bottles out of there over the years that all my concerns have been essuaged.
I will add that he would, in the driest months, put a bucket of water down there for some humidity. When the water started to mold, he would change it out. 
I’m at 18 years with a very similar set up (maybe 2 degrees higher in the peak summer) with no issues.
Isn’t south-facing still the south wall? You want the north side of the room to minimize solar heating.
Passive storage has never been an issue for me; going on 15+ years.
Temp holds at 54 for most of the year. I’m surrounded by Doug fir trees (my wife calls it the igloo house) so we don’t get direct sun on the house. Summer temps in the storage area might get to 61-63 (I check each time I enter) but that temp increase takes several days and only if we get past 90 outside for more than a few days.
Humidity is good. Seems like the only corks that get too dry are always Italian wines for some reason.
Let’s simply get rid of the word “facing” and be done with it? I think folks know North=good, South=bad.
Well, the inward side – the one you see – of the north wall faces south. Since no one sees the outward-facing walls, that’s how I took it.
I was trying to interpret it in line with what I assumed was his intention. But I wouldn’t argue with anyone who argued that it would be clearer to say the north wall. ![[thumbs-up.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/f/f84c5acc11486ee4baba6dee6cf61dbd133abb18.gif "[thumbs-up.gif]"){kind=small}
That must be the interior south facing wall, the northern wall of the building. I see others have said the same
10 plus years with passive cellar that goes as cold as 45 and up to 65 with very little daily variation, mean about 55 degrees. Never noticed anything amiss. Don’t sweat it.
25 years with passive cellar. Coldest mid-winter ~40F. Warmest mid-summer ~65. There is a southeast wall, I realized after one year that the ground heated the wall heated the wines next to the wall, I insulated it and moved everything a couple of feet back from it. No issues since then.
Why not buy a small fridge, set it at 50F and use it for wines meant for ageing over 15 years, give up the hassle of off-site?
I agree with the consensus that many wine lovers obsess unnecessarily about cellar temps.
Dan Kravitz
It may not be the most convenient way to store wine but when we lived in NJ I had the bottles on the cold concrete floor rather than on racks. The basement never got warm even in the summer but the floor was always much cooler even in the worse heat wave.
I used to arrange it by country or region and learned quickly to leave plenty of room for walking between aisles 
Tom