Chill out

LITTLE ROCK — Air, humidity, cool or warm temperatures, light and vibration.

These are all things people live with everyday: wind blowing off the Arkansas River, humid summer nights, fluorescent office lights and vibrating cell phones.

These things that people encounter daily, however, are not so good for wine. Which is why people who want to protect their wine from that which they tolerate seek to control how it is stored.

Proper storage protects the bottles from what Marshall Tillman III of Wine Enthusiast, a catalog and online retailer of wine accessories and equipment, calls “the enemies of wine,” which include fluctuating temperatures, lack of humidity, light and vibration.

Wine storage spaces should be kept about 55 degrees with 50 percent to 75 percent humidity. Darkness is also key because it will protect wine from ultraviolet rays. But that doesn’t mean every wine drinker needs to build a wine cellar, Tillman says.

Storage for red and white wines includes traditional wine cellars, carefully designed wine rooms and free-standing wine coolers that refrigerate wine at its optimal storage temperature and humidity. Size and style are dependent on how many bottles there are and how long they will be stored.

WINE COOLERS

Wine coolers or refrigerators can hold anywhere from a dozen to several hundred bottles of wine. The size of the appliance depends on the size of your collection, Tillman says.

The Wine Enthusiast Silent series can hold 12 to 48 bottles of wine. These starter wine coolers feature dual zone technology, which allows wine drinkers to chill some bottles for serving while storing others to age or drink at a later date.

“Dual zones are great because they give you serving temperature options,” Tillman says. “If you’re using it partially for storage and aging, but you also want to pull out your white wines and have them ready to drink, you can.”

One segment of the refrigerator will be set to 55 degrees for storage, while the other will be set to 40 or 45 degrees - the ideal serving temperature for white wine.

If you’re just drinking red wines, however, a dual zone may not be for you since red wines need to be served at 60 to 65 degrees - a temperature range usually achieved as the wine is decanted or aired out.

An option for those who want a small wine locker is to go to a retailer such as Sears, Home Depot or Lowe’s and pick up a less expensive model with either single or dual temperature zones, says Clark Trim, owner of Colonial Wines & Spirits in Little Rock.

“An under-the-counter model will hold 48 to 50 bottles of wine,” he says. “That’s the most economical way to go. After all, 50 bottles is quite a bit of wine.”

NEW COLLECTORS

A lot of beginners aren’t just storing 50 bottles of wine though, Tillman says.

“It’s surprising. A lot of people will go out to Napa and get swept up in the charm,” he says. “All of a sudden after going to 10 wineries, they’ve purchased 10 cases of wine or five cases of wine.”

Wine connoisseurs who want to store and serve larger collections should look into the N’Finity Pro series of wine coolers, Tillman says. That’s because N’Finity Pro coolers, like the Wine Enthusiast Silent models, feature dual zone technology that lends itself to aging some bottles for a few years while preparing other bottles for serving.

“For someone who’s doing short-term collecting and also serving, the N’Finity Pros are a fantastic, somewhat value driven way to go,” Tillman says.

Collectors who are wanting to age their wine for years, however, may want to invest in a EuroCave, Tillman says. These single-temperature zone units are designed specifically for aging wines at 55 degrees for a number of years.

“EuroCave has been doing it for 30 years, and they’re kind of the gold standard,” Tillman says.

That’s because the company has tried to re-create conditions similar to older, underground wine cellars used in France or California. In addition to keeping wine chilled at about 55 degrees and at 50 percent to 75 percent humidity, EuroCaves also feature doors that protect wine bottles from harmful UV light. But that’s not all.

“Because the cellars were underground, there was no vibration,” Tillman says. “There was nothing shaking up the room, so EuroCave made their compressors and coils very quiet and very still so as not to disturb the wine.”

N’Finity Pro and EuroCave make models that will hold as many as 200 or 300 bottles.

CUSTOM CELLARS

Owning several hundred bottles of wine may seem enough, but some collectors have even more - which is where wine cellars come in.

“People are still building wine cellars,” Tillman says. “It’s almost a bottle count thing. People who have 400 or 500 bottles are not going to want to buy three or four EuroCave or N’Finity units to put in their homes.”

Today’s wine cellars often don’t resemble the cavelike structures EuroCave sought to simulate 30 years ago. Cellars are no longer dark, musty places with rack after rack of wine. Companies like Wine Enthusiast and Wine Cellar Innovations design custom cellars that will fit into any home for a nominal fee. The modular racks that Wine Enthusiast sells come with suggested plans for organizing wine storage to fit your space.

Cellars can be built to match the rest of the decor in a home or they can look like a traditional cellar with a little help from some modern technology like a WhisperKool split cooling system. But there are certain features every wine cellar must have.

“You need to have a room that can handle the temperature and the humidity that you’re about to create,” Tillman says. “A lot of people will buy the wine cellar conditioners we sell and put them in their basement without prepping the room.”

Rooms with wine cellar conditioners need to have a vapor barrier; the right type of insulation - usually blown instead of rolled; and green board sheet rock similar to that used in most bathrooms.

“If you don’t have the proper insulation or the vapor barrier, humidity can actually travel to other parts of the home,” Tillman says.

Then all that’s needed is a cooler, racks and whatever decor the wine collector desires.

What if you don’t have the space or the budget to build a full-scale wine cellar? No problem, Trim says.

“You can take an area in your home and convert it into a wine locker or a wine room,” Trim says. “That can be an area under the staircase or in a closet. You just have to make sure there is no direct sunlight or incandescent light.”

All you have to do is measure the space available and go online to wineenthusiast.com or a similar site, Trim says. “Anyone can put together a cellar that would fit under a stairwell or in a closet for a pretty minimal expense.”