How to Invest in a Wine Cellar?
Investing in a wine cellar is embarking on the great oenological adventure! Far beyond the financial aspect, creating a collection of bottles is a way of life. Even for professional use, it requires a personal investment: passion, patience, and a long-term vision.
How to build a wine cellar? Where to install it? What cellar furniture to choose? Which wine bottles to acquire? In this comprehensive guide, Architecture Intérieure du Vin advises and accompanies you in creating your custom wine cellar.
What type of wine cellar to invest in?
For different needs and uses, there are several categories of wine cellars. It is important to know them beforehand to ask yourself the right questions and prepare the layout of your future wine space.
- A maturing cellar or aging cellar is intended to preserve and mature long-term storage wines for medium and long term, over many years.
- A storage cellar or service cellar is a space for temporarily storing a certain volume of bottles and possibly preparing them before tasting by temperature adjustment, aeration, decanting.
- A presentation cellar or exhibition cellar fulfills an aesthetic and sometimes commercial function by highlighting the bottles of a vintage, a domain, a vineyard through an elegant and neat staging.
- A tasting cellar is a space where it is possible to welcome guests or visitors to open and taste great vintages directly on site, in a resolutely oenological setting.
- A mixed wine cellar combines several of these formats, which can result in compartmentalization into several specific subspaces.
Before you start, it is therefore essential to define your wine space project according to your need, your use, your objective, and your desire. Depending on your constraints and your choice, you will need to invest differently. How to choose the right wine cellar? To learn more about this point, discover our complete guide to the different types of wine cellars.
Quel lieu investir pour constituer une cave à vin ?
Le choix de l’espace dans lequel créer une cave à vin est décisif. Le vin doit être considéré comme un être vivant et sensible. Pour que le nectar de Bacchus garde ses arômes et atteigne son apogée, il est nécessaire d’en respecter les critères de conservation. Température, hygrométrie, luminosité, propreté, stabilité : chaque détail compte. Afin d’en savoir plus sur le sujet, consultez notre guide complet sur les conditions à réunir pour une cave à vin.
Choosing the Best Space for Your Wine Cellar
In order to set up your wine cellar in the right space, always in line with your needs and usage, several solutions are available to you. Start by evaluating the necessary storage volume by estimating the number of bottles you want to keep in the same space in the long term. Depending on the number of square meters or even cubic meters you need, you can consider one of the following 3 options.
- If you have a sufficiently large space and meeting the necessary conditions for proper wine storage (ideal temperature, optimal humidity level, absence of vibration and bad odor, low light, gentle ventilation, etc.), you can install your cellar there.
- If your space can accommodate your future collection of bottles but does not offer the right temperature, the adequate humidity level, or other specific criterion for wine preservation, you can carry out work and adjustments for this purpose. For example, there are air conditioners and wine cellar humidifiers adapted to this type of problem, or materials and coatings to absorb vibrations on the floor or improve wall insulation.
- If you lack space to gather all your bottles in one room, you can distribute your wine cellar among several subspaces in your living space or your professional premises. Professional and modular wine furniture will be necessary to create these small custom spaces dedicated to your great vintages. However, if it is impossible to find space on the walls or in underutilized rooms, you will need to acquire a new location to invest in a wine cellar.
To further study the question, consult our guide on creating a wine cellar when space is limited at home.
The Importance of Investing in Quality Wine Cellar Furniture
Wine bottles are both heavy and fragile. To preserve bottles for several years, it is essential to use proper wine cellar furniture, specifically designed for storing, maturing, and handling fine wines.
To invest in and create your custom wine cellar under the best conditions, with meticulous design and unparalleled robustness, Architecture Intérieure du Vin designs and installs furniture perfectly tailored to the storage and presentation of your precious bottles.
Wine Cellar Accessories: The Detail That Makes All the Difference!
Useful and enjoyable, wine tools play a key role in the daily experience of your storage space. Exceptional corkscrews, pourers, aerators, preservation stoppers, vacuum pumps, French vineyard maps, foil cutters, glasses, and flutes: to perfect your ideal cellar, these sommelier instruments will be indispensable for carrying out your tasting ritual.
A collection wine tasting kit, the Cabinet d’Oeno-Curiosités brings together some of the finest creations from L’Atelier du Vin. Handcrafted by a master French cooper, it attaches vertically to a wall in your cellar or wine cabinet. Inside, you’ll find the wine tasting accessories you need to enjoy a bottle from your collection and can carefully store your tasting memories.
How to Invest in Wine Bottles?
A good wine cellar contains bottles selected with good taste, which is nonetheless a subjective value unique to each individual! In which vineyards, which cuvées, which vintages should you invest in? There isn’t a single and unique way to choose the bottles to store in a wine cellar. It all depends on your needs, your goals, your desires, and thus your tastes.
If you want to invest in a cellar for your personal consumption, to enjoy good wine with family or friends and set aside exceptional bottles for important moments, let yourself be guided by your taste experience and that of your loved ones by storing wines that you have enjoyed, quite simply. You can thus build your personal collection of bottles in a wine cellar that reflects your taste.
A Diverse Wine Cellar to Enjoy All Year Round!
To extend your tasting pleasure from January 1st to December 31st, in any circumstance, you’ll need to have wines of all colors, with different grape varieties and aromas: red wine, white wine, rosé wine, yellow wine, champagne, sparkling wines, dry wines, tannic wines, fruity wines, sweet wines, not to mention some spirits. After all, the ideal wine cellar is the one where you’ll always find a bottle that perfectly matches your dish of the day.
Not All Bottles Are for Aging
In terms of aging, let’s not forget that the storage time of wine varies depending on the vineyard and the vintage. Aging wine for several years only works with aging bottles. In reality, the majority of bottles are intended for short-term consumption and could turn after a few years.
Thus, wine enthusiast investors often turn to great vintages from the vineyards of Burgundy and Bordeaux known for their aging cuvées. Aging these wines in the cellar improves them, increasing their value in this specific market. However, collectors are increasingly investing in other wine regions offering excellent aging wines, especially the vintage grand crus of Champagne.
Seeking Advice from a Sommelier, Wine Merchant, or Oenologist
What type of wine should you invest in? Are you a wine enthusiast or a gastronomy professional? Should you focus on renowned fine wines for aging or invest in young, lesser-known but promising vintages? Should your cellar mainly consist of white or red wines?
Whatever your situation, it’s always beneficial to seek advice from a sommelier, wine merchant, or oenologist to help you make informed decisions, create your wine list, and learn proper cellar management practices. The owner of a wine bar will not make the same investment as the winemakers of a vineyard or a private collector. When in doubt, it’s better to consult an expert.
What Budget to Plan for Investing in a Wine Cellar?
A large number of factors and variables come into play when estimating a budget for investing in a wine cellar. Storage capacity, cellar renovation work, type of furniture, bottle acquisition costs: it’s impossible to provide a precise cost range without clarifying these different points and other important details.
To make an initial estimate of your project and equip yourself with professional-quality wine cellar equipment, Architecture Intérieure du Vin accompanies you from the initial idea to the design and installation of your custom wine space.
Whether you want to invest in an aging wine cellar, a service wine cellar, a tasting wine cellar, or an exhibition wine cellar, our furniture and experts will offer you the best choice while providing optimal value for money. Need advice? Want to visualize your wine cellar project? Feel free to contact us for a free and detailed quote.
Photo Credits: Cave des Sommeliers x Architecture Intérieure du Vin, Miléna Latil, Cédric Derbaise, Kieran Ferragu, and Jean-Baptiste Lortion
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