How to Start Your Wine Cellar Project

03 Jan How to Start Your Wine Cellar Project

Once you’ve finally decided on creating your own luxurious wine cellar, know that several essential aspects have to be taken into consideration. It might not be a good idea to move on ahead simply because you have the available space and budget to create one. Proper planning is critical for designing a luxurious wine cellar. Consider these customised cellars as an investment, and see to it that you proceed wisely. Here are some helpful tips that will get you started in no time:

1. Determine the Storage Capacity of Your Customised Cellar

Although you may have the required space to create a luxurious wine cellar, you should ask yourself how to utilise the area optimally. You might wonder how many bottles you can store while planning out this project. Here’s the ideal way to do it:

• Take into account the number of bottles you consume in a year.
• Determine the average age of the bottles you store in your collection. For example, if you consume roughly 260 bottles per year, and the average age of each bottle is 6 years. Multiply the two, and you will get the approximate amount, which in this case, is 1560.
• Once you’ve completed this step, add another 15% for wine tasting and buying sprees.

If you’re new to this, consider seeking professional assistance from experienced wine cellar design consultants. This is especially true if you’re moving up from cases stacked in a closet or even unrefrigerated spaces to a sophisticated climate-controlled cellar.

2. Have a Fixed Budget

Remember that creating a customised, wine cellar involves a considerable investment. However, this doesn’t mean that you need to spend unreasonable amounts. A great way to proceed is by creating a checklist of various items, and then determining what the most important things are. Besides preventing you from spending excessive amounts of money, it also ensures that your choices make the best use of your budget.

3. Determine the Ideal Location to Build It

Although you can easily build a wine cellar anywhere in your house, you must understand the difference between a climate-controlled cellar and a passive one. On the one hand, passive cellars effectively use ground temperature to maintain the temperature swings. Rather than making these swings daily, it makes them seasonally. Climate-controlled cellars can be installed anywhere in your house. In contrast, passive wine cellars can only be built only in subterranean basements. If you decide to go for the climate-controlled feature (which is a smarter choice), you must invest in the best-suited wine refrigeration system for the layout of the cellar.

4. Prepare the Room in an Appropriate Manner

While creating a custom wine cellar, you cannot merely designate a room and place your collection on wine racks. It is imperative that some aspects like the installation of a refrigeration unit, the vapour barrier, properly insulating the wine cellar doors, and assembling the wine racking systems are considered. Besides, you must insulate the walls and fill the holes. Also, find the perfect location for the electrical outlet. Although you can easily do it yourself, it might be a good idea to hire the services of an experienced design specialist. If you’re new to this, the professional will guide you through the entire process.

5. Designing the Cellar

This is probably one of the most exciting parts of building your custom wine cellar. But there are specific technical considerations as well, such as:

• How high would the racking assembly go?
• What kind of wine racks will offer you the most storage capacity?
• What size bottles are you typically going to store?
• Are you going to be storing several in bulk or in bins and boxes as well?
• Does the location you have selected have uneven corners? In such cases, you require the perfect curved and corner racks.
• You’re also going to have to choose between style and function. See to it that you find the perfect balance between the two.

6. Select the Right Wood

A few options you can opt from include: Premium Redwood, All-Heart Redwood, and Prime Mahogany. Aspects like the durability of the wood, cost-efficiency, grain patterns, and resiliency have to be taken into consideration. In case you wish to stain the wood, you must review how stain patterns show against the grain and colour variations that you typically get from wood.

To find out about how Signature Cellars can help you design and build a wine storage solution that can help protect your investment and add value to your home, call us on 1300 570 636 or email info@signaturecellars.com.au, and we will respond within the shortest possible time.

Thanks for reading,
Neil Smallman
Signature Cellars
1300 570 636