A few weeks ago we took you into the personal cellars of the Wide Roots team.
As I mentioned I have three wine racks: one for Wide Roots samples, one for personal wines, and a small “special collection” rack for my eight best bottles. The cellar in our reel videos is the extensive collection of our content strategist Lucretia…and that wasn’t even all of it – they are renovating this winter to properly house it all. But today I wanted to give you some tips on creating your own home cellar.
- How to set up your cellar
- Key elements to include/organize by
First, this is your cellar, and no one else’s. So if you want to invest a lot of money and make it fancy, go for it! If you prefer something simple, a basic setup is all you need, particularly if you have a location in your home that maintains a steady temperature all year.
- Typically storage in a basement works best
- Somewhere that will hold a temperature between 60℉ and 65℉ or 15℃ to 18℃
- A steady temperature in that range is best; minimize fluctuation.
- If your space stays 66℉ or 67℉ all year, then this will work fine.
- Store wine in a dark place
- No sunlight – or at least no sunlight that will hit the wine bottles
- Minimize artificial light as well
- You want a humid environment
- A dry environment will cause the corks to dry out, causing premature oxidation or damage to the bottles.
If you want to see what I have on my wine rack, the full IGTV video is here.
How I organize my wine rack: I like to keep my better wines closer to the top, particularly if they are older. It is easy to lose track of better bottles, and I want to make sure I drink wines before the effects of age cause them to deteriorate.
While my preferences change over time, currently I prefer wines while they are young, with some exceptions. Not all wine is meant to be aged; but there are some age worthy ones. [can link to previous blog post here] Time sometimes moves faster than we do, and if we lose track of our age worthy wines, we may miss the window to best enjoy them.
My first cut for organization is country: there are sections for Spain, France, Italy, and New World. Within each country section, I keep regions together, which also implies that like grapes are kept together. My specialty rack can hold eight bottles, and includes the eight best in my collection at any given time, although with the pandemic it has been holding fewer bottles more recently. While I enjoy Italian wines, the focus of our portfolio at the moment, I like to keep bottles on hand from all over, as what I want to drink can depend on time of year, food, company, and even mood. I have a magnum of champagne for when Wide Roots, LLC makes its first sale – and I expect this to be very soon. A celebratory bottle should always be in your wine rack. And even if there isn’t a celebratory event, it is always possible to celebrate for no reason at all.
I hope these tips are helpful, and please message me or comment if there is any further information you would like to explore.
Cheers! Salute.