A wine cellar sounds very grand, conjuring up images of Downton Abbey and other great houses, where the butler oversees hundreds of bottles of cobweb-covered wine in a large underground vault, all meticulously recorded in ledgers.
A wine cellar is really just somebody’s collection of wines, which can mean anything from hundreds of bottles if they are an avid wine drinker, or a box in the corner of your garage containing a few bottles of wine for the next weekend.
The vast majority of wine is ready to drink the day you buy it. Most won’t taste any better (or worse) if you keep it for a few weeks. Any longer and you really need to have an appropriate storage place. Ideally you need somewhere cool, dark and moist where the temperature won’t fluctuate too much. Not many modern houses and flats have such a space, so if you do intend building up a serious collection it might be worth investing in an air-conditioned wine cabinet, but these cost thousands of euro.
Why might you need a cellar? If you buy wine bottle by bottle as you need it, then you probably don’t. But a small stash might save you a mad last-minute dash to the wine shop before dinner. It means you can have your favourite wines to hand whenever you need them, if friends drop around unexpectedly or you feel like spoiling yourself on a Friday night.
But mostly cellars are for wine lovers. As an inveterate collector who cannot stop buying bottles of wine, I understand. I love to buy special hard-to-find bottles from the best vintages. I love to look at them slowly maturing. Leaving aside what I said earlier, some inexpensive wines will improve.
[ When in doubt should I order the second-cheapest wine on the wine list?Opens in new window ]
I recently tried a bottle on Aldi’s Monsigny Champagne (€22.99) that I had kept for a year. It was fantastic, better than a bottle directly from the supermarket. But I have to admit that I keep many of my wines far too long, waiting for the perfect moment that never happens, and they have been past their best when I finally do uncork them.
Most of the time I drink current vintages of wines bought from local wine shops, so I probably really only need one box or at most two of wine at any time. But that wouldn’t be as much fun so I will continue buying and make an effort to start drinking my old bottles.
