Well, not part 2 exactly. Now that I've convinced myself, my wife, and perhaps a few friends (whose eagerness is suspect) that I should construct a 1000 Bottle Wine Cellar, I have begun the real dirty work of full-on research.
A comment on the original post by reader Jaser really sums it up: "Anything that gets better by me doing nothing, is a great idea. The more you procrastinate, the more it's worth.... just don't drink it before its time!"
Knowledge, education, fundamentals, lots of work. All these words are scrubbing up against each other in my frontal lobes, lubricated by, of course, a glass of nice red wine.
Our current favorite wine is San Felipe's Merlot, 2002. I'd love for it to be 2000, or even 1997 or earlier... but we drink it too fast, and we don't have a cellar to age it properly.
Hence the project.
First I looked for online resources. There's a guy with basically a one-page website selling an e-book on wine cellars.
“One barrel of wine can work more miracles than a church full of saints.”
-Italian proverb -- this quote is the most interesting part of his website.
Then, of course, Amazon.com ads pop up. Books on how to build and design wine cellars! Looks like a couple good options here, and a couple of ooold options, like, from the 70s and shit.
Finally, there are further websites where you can buy pre-made racks to install in your new wine cellar. These actually seem to have the best initial advice on wine cellar construction, since they need you to build one to buy their racks!
About.com has a fun wine rack made out of PVC as well as some good basic tips on aging and storing wine.
Then I found two salivating websites:
Lots of pictures and descriptions and products to get me dreaming about a 500 square foot, inlaid wood and tile extravaganza!!!!
Which raised the first real question I need to solve. Should I start with a really nice, well-constructed sitting-room quality Wine Cellar or should I first focus on a cellar that is functional -- i.e. it ages wine appropriately.
Hmmmm.... Tune in as I engage myself in a quest to discover the answers to this and more!
Posted by BilFish at March 18, 2004 02:00 PM