Port wine cellar construction

[Roy Hersh]

When designing and then hiring a contractor to build out my wine cellar, this was the highly recommended book that provided lots of great information:

http://www.amazon.com/Build-Wine-Cellar ... 1891267000

[Eric Menchen]

I have that book, well at least the 3rd edition. It is a good guide. I should check what my edition and the latest says, but the Amazon cover still shows fiberglass wall insulation. This can work, but if/when I build again, I want to do spray foam insulation in a 6" wall with staggered 2x4 studs. That eliminates the need for a vapor barrier, gives better R-value per inch, and the staggered studs discount them as a thermal transfer path. Double studs would be even better, but that might not be so practical in a tight basement space with hanging walls.

This shows fiberglass, but gives you the idea of staggered studs:

[Moses Botbol]

I am starting to build a wine cellar right now. I am thinking of using the whole cellar instead of framing out a room. I figure for the construction cost of the room, it would about the same or cheaper to cool the whole cellar for a the few months a year I would need it.

I am looking for a cost effective racking solution. I'd prefer one that I can take with me when I move out. Any suggestions?

[Eric Menchen]

I am looking for a cost effective racking solution. I'd prefer one that I can take with me when I move out. Any suggestions?

The Bordex racking I have was removed from another cellar, and purchased via craigslist. So it can be moved and relocated. But getting it to fit exactly in a new location isn't trivial:

rack_cutting_sml.jpg (91.23 KiB) Viewed 3447 times

If you truly want something easy to relocate, you might be better off buying something like this:
http://www.wineenthusiast.com/swedish-1 ... e-rack.asp
I actually bought a couple of those used on craigslist before I built out my current cellar.

[Moses Botbol]

What do you think of this style:


I'd like to have shelf space for 700-1000 bottles and the rest can stay in boxes-owc's. Is securing it to concrete problematic or would I frame on the concrete and secure to the frame?

[Eric Menchen]

What do you think of this style: ...
I'd like to have shelf space for 700-1000 bottles and the rest can stay in boxes-owc's. Is securing it to concrete problematic or would I frame on the concrete and secure to the frame?

Like my racking, you've got metal there that can scrape the labels, so you need to be careful putting bottles in and removing them. I have plastic pieces that cushion the bottles on the bottom. That rack is very space efficient, which is good. But it doesn't look like there is much holding up the bottles themselves, just a bar at the front and a crossbar at the back. So you need to be doubly careful inserted and pulling bottles so they don't hit each other above and below.

Where I live, you would want to frame in front of the concrete and insulate that. The ground is cool, but not quite 55 F for a little bit of the summer. Then you can attach to the framing, and even use drywall anchors in some spots if necessary. The attachments are not bearing the weight, just keeping the rack from falling over. And I have a friend that will attest that you want to keep it from falling over. Sad story. But if you don't want to frame, you can attach to concrete with a hammer drill and the right anchor. It isn't fun, but I've done it in a different application.

[Moses Botbol]

[quote="Moses BotbolWhere I live, you would want to frame in front of the concrete and insulate that. The ground is cool, but not quite 55 F for a little bit of the summer.

I have wine in my cellar 40 years that never got down was never below the low 60's in the summer and you'd think it was right from a Chateau. I don't really care about keeping a constant 55, all of my wine and the cellars I have accumulated (of older wines) are all natural cellar as common in the my region. I was just guilding the Lily to throw in a ducted AC unit. I haven't moved into the new house yet, but when I was in that cellar this summer; it was a buying point for me. I want to keep having the slight seasonal swings my wines have been accustomed to.

Would make an interesting thread topic on seasonal swings vs steady temperature for a wine cellar. Bourdy, of http://www.cavesjeanbourdy.com, a Jura wine maker (goes back to 16th century) whose wines are among the best aging in all of wine says seasonal swings are vital to long term aging. He was quite adamant on this.

[Eric Menchen]

So maybe you can live with no insulation. I did for a few years. My seasonal variation was around 50-55 in the winter to around 60-63 in the summer, with very little variation day to to day with racks against a cement wall to earth. My bigger issue was the lack of humidity during the winter, which is now better controlled.

[Moses Botbol]

My bigger issue was the lack of humidity during the winter, which is now better controlled.

Same for me with the lack of humidity, but I have never seen any issue with the bottles to make me think I need more humidity.

[Andy Velebil]

My bigger issue was the lack of humidity during the winter, which is now better controlled.

Same for me with the lack of humidity, but I have never seen any issue with the bottles to make me think I need more humidity.

Just curious, what did you come up with to increase the humidity?

[Eric Menchen]

Just curious, what did you come up with to increase the humidity?

Now that the basement is finished, the house humidifier is adding humidity to the area outside of the cellar during winter. And the cellar chilling unit takes the basement air and makes it colder, which increases the relative humidity. I have a humidity sensor on my cooler controller that I could use to turn on an additional humidifier in the cellar, but I haven't found the need to do that.

[Moses Botbol]

My bigger issue was the lack of humidity during the winter, which is now better controlled.

Same for me with the lack of humidity, but I have never seen any issue with the bottles to make me think I need more humidity.

Just curious, what did you come up with to increase the humidity?

Hanging laundry to dry is all I am planning.

[Andy Velebil]

Same for me with the lack of humidity, but I have never seen any issue with the bottles to make me think I need more humidity.

Just curious, what did you come up with to increase the humidity?

Hanging laundry to dry is all I am planning.

So when we read your TN's that say, "Has smells of damp socks and underwear" we'll know where it came from.

[Glenn E.]

Hanging laundry to dry is all I am planning.

So when we read your TN's that say, "Has smells of damp socks and underwear" we'll know where it came from.

Now we know why Moses seems to encounter more corked bottles than the rest of us...

[Moses Botbol]

Hanging laundry to dry is all I am planning.

So when we read your TN's that say, "Has smells of damp socks and underwear" we'll know where it came from.

Now we know why Moses seems to encounter more corked bottles than the rest of us...

Well, I don't know on that, but if my TN's mention Tide or Woolite; you'll know why.

[Andy Velebil]

[Mads Barnkob]

I am not years from moving from apartment to house, so just ordered the book, at a mere 20$ with shipping, the wine ill drink while reading it is the issue

[Tom Archer]

An awful lot of rubbish gets written about wine storage, most of it copied, unchecked, from past scribblings..

Do the cellars of the great châteaux of France hover around the 10-11C mark, 365 days a year? No, they don't. They may seem cool on a blazing summer's day, but if it's 35C outside, walking into a cellar at 20C feels like descending into a freezer.

Look around the lodge cellars in Gaia - several have thermometers on the wall, but they all seem to have strangely got broken at some point in the past, and no-one has got round to repairing them.

It's not that these cellar conditions are inherently bad, it's just that they don't match the conditions described by Parker etc..

Mean summer temperatures of 20C push the maturation cycle forward, possibly a little faster than is ideal, but it isn't such a big deal.

The issue to worry about is day/night fluctuations, and, perhaps more importantly, multiple intra day micro shocks, that occur when chillers cut in and then cut out, causing the temperature to see-saw up and down during the day..

[Eric Menchen]

Does this look like a see-saw? Sure, the red line does, which roughly corresponds to the chiller cutting in and out. But what about the purple line (air temperature about 6" from the top of the cellar), green line (temp probe in a 750 ml bottle, about eye level), and orange line (temp probe in a 375 ml bottle, 3 to 4 feet from floor) ? There are from samples taken over a 24 hour period, every 12 minutes. Temperatures are in degrees Fahrenheit.

chillin.jpg (54.89 KiB) Viewed 3257 times

[Tom Archer]

Eric,

Those graphs suggest that your chilling system's fluctuations are sufficiently isolated from your bottles to work effectively.

What raised the alarm with me was the far poorer ullages of auction lots that had been kept in temperature controlled rooms as opposed to natural cellars. As chilled spaces tend to suffer from condensation or icing, low humidity did not seem a likely suspect, but a look at the mechanics of chillers revealed an obvious culprit, as evidenced by your top graph.