How do you store your wine?

[Waiters Friend]

I vaguely remember a thread on this many years ago, but haven't searched for it. At the time, I would have mentioned my garden shed, with the spray-on poly-urethane insulation on the inside and a box air conditioner through the wall. It's still in use after 21 years - although has been moved once. 3m x 3m shed with largely Modularack wine racks houses approx. 1100 bottles. That was enough for a while - well, 10 years ago.

Over recent years, I started stacking cardboard boxes in front, behind and around the racking - to the point where there were around 2000 bottles in the space. From an energy efficiency point of view, it was marvellous - less air to cool vs the liquid in the 18m3 space - but I had to climb over boxes to get in and move around. And it made it quite difficult to access many of the wines in the racks without some weight lifting of boxes.

The solution? My kids have grown up, and their former bedroom is now the site of renovations. The window cavity is sealed off with reflective material covering the windows, polystyrene filler and timber boards covering the cavity. A split system air conditioner has been installed, and I've trawled Gumtree for Bordex wine racks. Normally, at nearly $5 per bottle new, I would have stayed away from Bordex (and spent the money on wine) but after a few substantial secondhand buys totalling around 800 bottles worth (and averaging $1.20 per bottle), I'm going with it. The room will hold around 1800 bottles easily, and I have some Bordex lookalikes to assemble, as well as a series of genuine Bordex custom racks on order to fill corners and some gaps. The eventual result will be wine to ceiling height wrapped around all of the walls - 2 full walls (24 bottles high x 40 or more bottles wide) are already in and it's looking good. The remainder will hopefully be in by Christmas. Total cost will be around $2.50 per bottle (including aircon).

This will give me a combined cellaring capacity of 3000 bottles, and all at home. I'm not interested in offsite storage if I don't have to, and at an all-up cost of $2.50 a bottle (plus ongoing power costs) I consider this to be a sound investment for the wines to be accessible. And yes, I have solar panels on the roof (although would like more and this venture may spur further investment in solar and battery storage).

Overkill? Quite possibly. Worth it? To be able to access each and every bottle when I want, and make choices in the moment if I wish - Absolutely.

Cheers
Allan