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Thought it would be good to share some of your wine storage solutions. Admittedly, this is a self interest topic as my current Climadiff storage unit in the garage is quickly filling up and need to look at other solutions (other than stop buying wine) so I’m looking for ideas from the community.
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I’m going to follow this thread for a good reason - and it seems to be the same as yours!
I have 2 Storage units - a Liebherr Grand Cru and a Swisscave but both of which are now over capacity, resulting in a number of “cellar defenders” now being stored under the stairs.
I’d be looking at purchasing a small unit with (say!) a 30-40 capacity unit that I could sell the idea of to my wife! Will take a photo of my units later.
Chris
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If you search under cellar, storage, wine storage, or various similar headings you’ll find quite a lot of comments about members’ ways of dealing with their wine. Mostly you’ll find that sooner or later space tends to become a problem whatever solution is adopted.
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I thought the idea of TWS offering next day free delivery on even a single bottle was to make them the cellar, at least for the cellar defenders?
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Exactly my current thinking but will it be enough!
I live in a nice cold location and so use my utility room which never gets above 17 or 18 C. I also have a Climadiff in there for more expensive wines and/or ones that need to slumber for somewhat longer. I put these photos up on another thread a while ago but since I still have them here they are again:
Note I’m aware that the cabinet is going to chuck out some heat but as the room never gets very warm anyway the cabinet doesn’t actually have much work to do. I’ve been monitoring over this summer and the temperatures above are the maximums during this summer. It’s currently getting up to a maximum of about 16C during the day. I will probably want to add a little warmth during the winter as it’s not a heated room.
As for space…that’s it apart from a few ready to drink bottles located closer to the action! So I must now be disciplined enough to buy no more than I’m drinking (a work in progress!).
Oh, and what you can’t really see there is that some of that racking has boxes of wine on the shelves!
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On left is Eurocave for aging, contents clarets, some Pinotages and Zinfandels, also some sweeties including Vin de Constance and icewines.
Rack is double depth, giving capacity of 480 bottles, plus 24 on top -which houses mostly sparkling wine bottles too wide to fit in holes.
Boxes contains Montepulciano destined to refill the kitchen ready-rack, wines for upcoming tastings and some bottles I have bought for my son. Also some wines in house…
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Getting cellar envy.
Some stuff in TWS reserves too - nothing stays in the spare room wardrobe (ahem, cellar) more than a couple of years, most nowhere near that long.
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I have a 2-part storage solution. In my shed is my iCave 70 where my maturing reds and drink-ready whites are. It’s double depth and I easily forget what’s in there in the rear stack. It holds about 220 bottles and keeps the temperature between 9 and 11 degrees.
In the house - the usually-dark north facing walk-in pantry with air bricks - is my drink soon reds and overspill whites and rosés etc. It’s made from welded iron with hinged doors and I bought it in a closing down sale at the Cliftonville Hotel in Cromer some decades ago. The capacity can be deduced from the photo.
Ashamedly I have a similar quantity in a cool darkened under-stairs ground floor room in France which are on simple plastic self-assembly racks.
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Nothing special here I’m afraid. Just an understairs cupboard which is north east facing, never gets any sun in the morning, a longish outside wall, but only moves about 0.2 degrees a day. Across a year, it moves from around 20 degrees to 13 degrees, but very very very slowly which is fine, thermal mass is a wonderful thing! You’d be surprised at the amount an underground Chateau cellar changes through the year!
I was at a party in 2019, and Will Lyons was also a guest. I was asking him about his Bordeaux EP views for that year, and got onto general wine matters as you do. Having regaled him with the description of my fathers wine storage (in the garage, near the boiler for the under floor heating, with any excess in the shed in the garden - i know, I’m also horrified (but he’s stopped that now) but haven’t had a bad bottle yet in his house) his view was that wine is quite robust, as long as it doesn’t heat and cool too quickly, it’ll be fine. It might just mature quicker if kept slightly warmer than optimum temperatures
We have a thermometer in the “cellar” (known to most as a cupboard) that reads every 5 minutes, and the graph for the last few months is flat in comparison to the outside temperature, and again, I’ve never yet ruined a bottle. We’re having Pontet-Canet 1996 which has been in there for 7 years on Friday, and i know it’ll be superb!!
Anything that needs years yet is either at TWS or Seckford
Since early June:
Humidity in orange, the outside temperature is the grey line, the cupboard is the blue line
Anyway, it looks like this (please excuse the nasty mint green carpet (and the homemade hedgerow booze), its there to remind us of what poor taste the previous owners of the house had!) Not great photos, but here you go
Reminds me, a few spaces to fill up!!
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I think however much space you have, it will gradually (or in some cases from this community, quite quickly) fill up with ‘good’ wine that needs keeping.
This results in drinkers/cellar-defenders spilling out into old-school open racks/stuffed under the stairs/in TWS boxes wedged under the sideboard in the hall 
etc.
Honestly, this is a battle you cannot win.
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Same here! Also got a Bluetooth thermometer there and it registered a min of around 12c in the depth of winter (lost the log) and nudged just above 20c in the heatwave in June. Compared to the swings of outdoor temperatures it is pretty smooth, maybe dropped or raised 0.3-0.4c in a single day once or twice. Right now sitting at 17.5c.
It’s not full height either, more of a crawl space that doubles up as my daughter’s dollies nursery.
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Also see the following thread: What’s your Cellar Like?
And this one; How do you physically arrange your home wine storage?
And this one, which also shows my cellar: Wine wall
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@JosK I’m sure offering alt threads is well intentioned, however I find it may detract conversation from the current thread. Naturally, with this kind of forum there is a degree of repetition so we could probably reply with someone’s previous comments etc to every post but changes do happen and old threads can be updated. Also, I think we should be encouraging those newer to the forum to be able to start a conversation without fear of the ‘we’ve done that one’.
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I read @JosK’s post as a ‘more stuff in these links for people interested in this topic’ rather than a ‘we’ve already done this topic’ one!
There’s a wealth of interesting stuff buried in older conversations, but it’s not always easy to find with the search function on this particular forum.
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Thanks for the useful additional materials. They help enrich the latest thread on cellars, which I personally can’t get enough of. I would love my own cellar. I have 2 wine cabinets and have a bit of spill over into a commercial fridge, a short-term holding area. Still making royal use of TWS Reserves too. I have a number of other refrigeration devices for beer making contents, as well as beer making (glycol chiller) so simply cannot justify adding to the thrumming collection…but if I were to this cheeky little cave a vin I spied on eBay yesterday would appeal. Not that I had any business looking of course.
If Rightmove had a cellar criterion I would probably waste a good chunk of my life looking for an affordable, beautiful place to eventually retire to and to home all of “my preciousesessssss”. It’s just as well it does not!
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I think on reflection you make a fair point so apologies @JosK. I think the point I was trying to make wasn’t well articulated, I think it’s good to see contributions from newer members and looking back at old posts may deter those from doing so. However, I do accept that this can also enrich the thread.
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Thank you @Matthew-8EAE4, I do see the point you were making, and indeed I did not intend to detract from this thread, which I very much enjoy. And thanks again for taking the initiative to start it. Storage is a major issue for most in this community. I hope newer members keep feeling encouraged to contribute, and at some stage we were all new members…
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Thanks @Matthew-8EAE4.
I think the last thing any of us would want to do is discourage newer members from getting involved, and especially in starting new topics.
There’s always a good chance that something’s been raised before - but as you say, things move on and it’s great to get fresh takes on popular themes. And if someone with better memory/search/linking skills than me can further enrich new discussions with some older perspectives on the same thing, all the better as far as I’m concerned!
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