How to store wine if you don’t have a wine cellar? (II)

If you don’t have a wine cellar, then there are several rules you need to obey to store your wine correctly. Otherwise the wine will age the way it should.

Absence of light

Any strong light will change the colour of your wine. It will darken the colour of a white wine and it will lighten the colour of a red wine.

You obviously need lights in your cellar, but the cellar should be as dark as it can be. This means alternatives to cellar, in any normal flat or house, would be a cupboard or a little cupboard under the stairs or somewhere where there is no light at all.

General movement of wine

Once you store your wines, if it’s a wine, which needs 3-4, 10, 15 years to age, it should move as little as possible.

If you are not lucky enough to have a nice underground cellar, you can actually build a circular cellar under your house. Otherwise, there is the classic eurocave, which looks like a fridge, with different sizes. Or you could just get a wine rack, slot the wines, and put it in your cupboard.

So the key things: the temperature—as cool as possible, as dark as possible, and as quiet as possible. And with a little bit of humidity if possible, but that’s not essential.