When you are passionate about wine you begin collecting it … and when you begin collecting it you need a place to store it.

A closet can easily be turned into a mini wine cellar to store your growing wine collection.

Before you construct your wine cellar consider the position of the closet in relation to the rest of the house.

Avoid converting a closet situated against an outside wall into a mini wine cellar. The outside walls of your house or apartment can often be subject to wide fluctuations in temperature from summer to winter. Ideally, choose an internal closet where your wine will be able to be stored at a more constant temperature.

The speed and the degree of the temperature change are critical elements to successfully storing and aging wine. A gradual change of a few degrees between summer and winter shouldn’t be a cause for concern. A similar change each day will hurt your wines and age them too quickly.

The major rule when in wine storage is to avoid wide fluctuations in temperature. You’ll notice damage of this type immediately from the stickiness that will often form around the capsule. Over a period of time the continual contraction and expansion of the wine will damage the integrity of the cork. It’s like having the cork pulled in and out again every day. When this happens, minute quantities of wine may be pushed out along the edge of the cork (between the cork and the bottle neck) allowing air to seep back in. Once air comes in contact with your wine the irreversible process of oxidation will begin and your wine will be ruined.

At 55º to 58ºF the wine will age properly, enabling it to fully develop. Higher temperatures will age wine more rapidly and cooler temperatures will slow the ageing process. Irreversible damage will occur if your wine is stored at a temperature above 82ºF for a month or more.

The most difficult part of creating a wine cellar in a closet can be finding other places to store the original contents of the closet! Be ruthless … remove all the present contents (give away / auction / move them) and start with an empty closet!

Purchase some inexpensive wine racks from a hardware store, online retailer or storage shop and you’ll have a simple but very effective mini wine cellar.

Wine rack designs will vary in bottle density; price variations have less to do with efficiency and more to do with appearance.

Single racking is generally the easiest for selecting bottles. If you have racks against only one wall of the closet you may still have floor or shelf space available for wines that you purchase by the case.