You don’t need a cave to cellar wine

I daresay most people think of wine cellars as dark and dusty places where wine is stored in serried ranks and where only expensive wine is kept. But think again. Collecting wine can be a fun and (relatively) inexpensive hobby. You don’t need a cave, just somewhere cool and out of direct heat and light – a north facing room is a good start.

I keep two cellars – one upstairs where wine is on a basic rack as a ready stock. Here I keep wines I intend to drink near term like within the next few days or months. In our basement I have another series of racks where I keep wine intended for longer term storage. By most standards I have a small cellar, averaging about 50 – 60 bottles and it doesn’t take long to build that up over a couple of years – just sock away a couple a month and, hey, presto, you have a nice reservoir of wine.

I’ve learned a few lessons along the way:

• You’ve got to drink it sometime. Unless you’re buying very expensive collectable wine (in which case you should invest in building a proper cellar), the goal is to have a supply of interesting wine to drink in the future.

• For this reason buy wine for the cellar in pairs at least. You don’t need to blow your budget on case lots, but there is nothing worse than digging one out after a few years, finding it’s fantastic and then not having any more.

• Keep tasting notes. The wine will change over time and it’s a great way to record the differences in tastes as wines age.

• Allow a few bottles to get ‘forgotten’. It’s real fun to find a dusty specimen lurking in a dark corner and open it up. Might be junk or it might be a gem. I found a bottle of 1975 Parducci Charbono in my cellar. We opened it up with friends last week and, against all expectations, it was fabulous.

• Keep adding year after year. I was doing that then stopped, I now have a cellar with mainly 10+ year wine. Once this runs out I don’t have too much to replace it for a few years.

• Be prepared for the odd disappointment. Inevitably some wine will be corked or will have gone sour. We opened, with eager anticipation, a 1999 Chateauneuf-du-Pape last week and it was an instant throw out. This is another good reason to keep more than one bottle – you get a second chance.

Although all wine you buy in stores is going to keep for months almost regardless of the conditions you keep it in, most red wine will benefit from some aging. How much is a matter of how the wine is made. Some wines will keep for a couple of years, others virtually forever. So it’s good to ask when you are buying it about how long it could be kept.