Wine Storage: Bang for the buck

[Roy Hersh]

In terms of value for money, do you think it is most cost efficient to have your own cellar, (racking and active cooling) ... or off-site cellar, or stand up wine refrigeration units? Obviously it will matter if you are looking at this for just a one year investment, but also look at this for 3, 5 and/or 10 years. Which do you feel is the best investment?

[Glenn E.]

I haven't done a cost comparison for a full in-home cellar, but between off site storage and wine refrigerators the choice is clear in the Seattle area. Wine fridges are less expensive by a significant margin.

I can get a high-end wine fridge for $2000 that will hold 200 bottles and last for 10 years, so that's $200 per year. (I'm using round numbers, the actual numbers are better.) Off site storage for 8 cases - a mere 96 bottles - is $215 per year.

It's no contest.

Edit: looked up more current offsite storage numbers for Seattle area. They're better, but still no contest compared to buying a high-end wine fridge.

[Derek T.]

There are non-economic benefits to off-site compared with a home solution, particularly the fact that you can't get your grubby hands on the youngsters too easily so are more inclined to leave them alone

[Moses Botbol]

Natural cellar for me, but I know a many parts of the USA do not build cellars.

I'd imagine as Glenn states, the Fridges are least expensive option. For natural cellar, the only cost is the house

[Andy Velebil]

There are non-economic benefits to off-site compared with a home solution, particularly the fact that you can't get your grubby hands on the youngsters too easily so are more inclined to leave them alone

So true, having an offsite really helps me to avoid drinking the young ones too early.

For where I live, if you don't already have a basement it is either not permitted due to earthquake issues or it's super super expensive to make it strong enough to hold up in an earthquake. I looked into it at my house when I was remodeling. It was just crazy expensive to do so I scrapped the idea.

In talking to someone I know who did build a cellar, similar to what mine would have been, had one major draw back. It become super expensive to keep at 55 degrees. he basically keeps his around the 62 degree mark as any lower than that the cooler unit runs all the time.

I've got several offsite lockers, some for long term, so I can't easily get to them which I like. I put all my young stuff in those long term ones and leave it alone. Then the lower "daily access" ones I keep all the rest. At home I keep two coolers stocked and what's in them is for drinking whenever I feel like it.

The only big down site to offsite is the lack of convenience, but as Derek mentioned, that's a good thing sometimes.

[Moses Botbol]

In talking to someone I know who did build a cellar, similar to what mine would have been, had one major draw back. It become super expensive to keep at 55 degrees. he basically keeps his around the 62 degree mark as any lower than that the cooler unit runs all the time.

My cellar is only in the 50's maybe 3 months a year and in the summer gets in the higher 60's. Temp swings are very slow seasonal curves. I'd put my cellared bottles against anyone's constant 55 degree cellar. None of the cellars we visited in Portugal were 55 degrees...

[Eric Menchen]

I think for a lot of people this is a more a practical decision than a pure economic one. You can build a cellar just about anywhere, but while it might not cost more than the rest of your house construction per square foot, it may be ridiculously expensive in some cases, like where basements aren't allowed, etc. Fridge units could be placed in your home just about anywhere, but maybe you just don't have a "good" place, or a space that meets with spousal approval. Off-site may be more or less expensive, but I suspect there are plenty of places in the U.S. where there isn't an off-site wine storage facility anywhere close by.

For me, the nearest off-site facility is about an hour away. That isn't convenient enough for me, and I think it was going to work out to be much more expensive in the long run compared to building out a cellar in my basement, which is what I did. I considered the fridge units, but they didn't seem ideal, as I also wanted a cooler for beer, which was being stored in a "keezer," a chest freezer with an external temperature controller used to hold beer kegs. So in finishing the basement, I designed a two zone walk-in cooler. There is a small section for beer at serving temperature, and white wine ready-to-drink; and a larger section for long term storage of beer and wine. The two zones are divided by a wall and one of those vinyl curtain doors you see on commercial walk-in fridges. The cooling unit is in the small section, with a fan between the two zones to pump air into the big section when necessary. Wine is maintained at 55F.

I purchased the cellar cooling unit and racking for ~900 bottles used on craigslist for about $500 as I recall. That really helped keep the cost down. Constructing the cellar probably cost a little more than the basement recreation room and bedroom per square foot (more insulation, vapor barrier, exterior door, etc.), but less than the bathroom (tile in the shower, glass shower door, etc.). I haven't measured the electricity cost since I installed the two-zone temperature controller, but before I put that in I plugged the chiller into a Kill-a-Watt to measure electricity usage for two weeks in the fall. Based on my electricity cost of $0.06/kwh (Longmont has really cheap electricity), I estimated the chiller would cost about $5/month to keep my wine at 55F. At that time the chiller would come on once for about 30 minutes every four hours. Now that winter is here, it comes for a much shorter amount of time. But I expect the opposite in summer. We'll see next year.

Since I had space in the basement, was already going to finish the rest of the basement, found a chiller and racks for cheap, and have a long term perspective, building a cellar was my best option.