subject: How To Tell A Good Wine Cellar [print this page] A wine storage facility normally built underground for storing wines in bottles and barrels is called a wine cellar. A wine cellar has to have a favorable environment to ensure that the wine stored there remains in its fresh state even after many years. The humidity and temperature of a wine cellar should be carefully monitored in order to guarantee that the wine remains fresh in the cellar. When a wine cellar is built above the ground, it is referred to as a wine room while those that contain less than 500 bottles are referred to as wine closets. One of the biggest reasons for building a wine cellar is protecting wine from harsh environmental factors such as heat and light. Wine is a perishable food product that should be protected from fluctuating temperatures, heat and light as well as vibrations and light. With proper storage, wine not only maintains its freshness but also improves on the quality of its aroma, complexity and flavor.
A good wine cellar should have the required qualities to maintain or improve the quality of wine. It should therefore have regulated temperatures that range from 5-18 C all the time and as few variations as possible. The temperature changes should also be regulated to ensure that it does not change by more than 10 C at any given time. This temperature level was arrived at because caves in France where wines used to be kept ranged around that temperature. If the temperature is higher than 18 C, the wine will mature too fast and cause the wine to lack some qualities of a well-matured wine. One can tell that a wine matured too fast when it lacks the sweet and savory taste of most wines and instead tastes like vinegar.
A wine cellar can be actively cooled or passively cooled. Wine cellars with active cooling systems need proper insulation and professional construction. These cooling systems need to be installed in order to ensure that the humidity and temperature of a wine cellar are monitored. Active cooling systems are not used very regularly unless the weather is too hot. Areas that are naturally very cools are the best areas to have a passively cooled wine cellar. Passive cooling does not require any energy to work and is used mainly in basement wine cellars. Although they are sometimes unreliable, they are cheaper to maintain.
