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The home wine cellar
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It is the dream of all fine wine lovers: a small but well-stocked cellar all of their own. A place just a few select friends are privy to, where you go before dinner and ponder which wine to take to the table.
Of course, the ideal dream cellar would be an ancient tufa cavern, with little niches for bottles carved into the rock, fine sandstone dust on the ground, a table for some solitary tasting and a candle for observing the color of a newly-opened wine against the light. |
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Domestic cellars, however, do not always correspond to such dreams or to the needs of wine, and since we must lay aside any illusions of having all the dungeons of a Medieval castle, let's see how we can make the very best of the space available, starting from understanding the essential characteristics of an ideal wine cellar:
cool (10-15°C)
northerly facing
suitable level of humidity (60-70%)
protected from light
temperature as stable as possible
far from strong or unpleasant odours
burglar-proof
These are not excessive requirements because wine is a constantly changing, complex combination of chemical substances and as such is sensitive to heat and light.
If the cellar is an underground one there are generally few major problems, although often the difference between summer and winter temperatures can have quite an influence. The ideal cellar, as we have said, would be located in an area with a temperature between 10 and 15°C, otherwise you will have to organize your cellar in such a way as to have quite a rapid rotation of bottles. This is because the majority of wines can survive an overly hot cellar for a few months, but not for a few years!
You should therefore show some restraint when it comes to buying in order to avoid leaving fine wines in the cellar too long. To this end, you can adopt the strategy used in professional wine cellars by keeping a cellar diary up to date, with entry dates of any given batch of wine, so you always have a clear idea of which bottles ought to be considered for the table before others.
The same applies to light, which over prolonged periods of time damages wine. However, this is an easier problem to deal with than high temperatures, since all you have to do is to screen off any windows in order to shut it out.
Nonetheless, beware when screening light sources that you do not make the mistake of using the classic sheet of black plastic, which not only blocks out light but also air, doing more harm than good. Wine needs air and a certain degree of humidity, because otherwise the corks dry out too much and are no longer able to protect the wine inside the bottle to the best of their ability.
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As far as the logistics of a well-managed wine cellar is concerned, the market offers a wide range of solutions, from the most basic bottle racks to prefab modular niches in masonry. The tip is not to spend more on racks than you do on wine, especially when the cellar cannot, for very logistical reasons, become anything more than a storage area.
Modular racks in vibrated concrete combine reasonable price with practicality, allowing you to store bottles on their sides, a position that promotes better storage, avoiding exchange of gas with the external environment. Even classic wooden racks may serve our purpose, as long as they are strong enough to withstand the considerable weight of the bottles.
Special care must be taken if there is any mould on the cellar walls, since this can taint the wine. It is strongly advisable to scrape it away and try to waterproof and sanitize the affected areas, although this is not always an easy task.
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Professional cellar keepers are well acquainted with the secret needs of different wines and know that it is unadvisable to let whites "lie" too long because their structure simply does not allow proper aging.
The opposite is true of reds, which generally benefit from a few years' aging before being opened since only then do the vinous aromas of a youthful wine develop into that bouquet rich in spices, herbs and fruit that is characteristic of mature wines.
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Which wines should you choose for your cellar?
Quite rightly, every one has their own ideas here, but a good suggestion is to have a mixture comprising 30% white wines, 50% reds, 15% spumantes and 5% passiti.
As regards whites, no cellar would be complete without some great del Collio wines (the wines of the hills around Gorizia, in the northern Italian region of Friuli), plus a few bottles of Traminer aromatico (the name indicates its origins in the Termeno, a town of the northern Alto Adige region) and some Vermentino di Gallura (from the island of Sardinia).
On the red wine front, no self-respecting cellar would wish to be found lacking a few bottles of Barbera, Nebbiolo or Barbaresco, but as well as this show of respect for Piedmont, at least one Blauburgunder (Pinot noir) from South Tyrol is obligatory, as is some Cabernet-Franc from Friuli and, for truly grand occasions, a bottle of great Amarone, a DOC (Denominazione di Origine Controllata - Of Guaranteed Origin) from the Venetian region.
Some more resources ought to be invested in a minimum but mandatory presence of Chianti Classico (Tuscany), Montepulciano d'Abruzzo (Abruzzo) and Aglianico del Vulture (southern region of Basilicata).
Leaving Spumante aside, the choice of which passito to buy should not overlook Albana di Romagna and Moscato di Pantelleria.
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