Should a wine cellar be sunken?
I am building a house and some prople believe that the wine cellar should be sunken and some don’t
Tagged with: building a house • prople • wine cellar
Filed under: All Things Wine
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
The main needs for long-term wine storage are nearly-constant temperature, a temperature range between 12-15 degrees C (53-59 F), no sunlight and freedom from significant vibration. These conditions can be found 10 meters (30 feet) below the earth surface in Portland, OR, St. Louis, MO and New York City. Where is your location compared to a line drawn across the U.S. through those cities? Farther south of that line, the temperatures will be warmer. Closer to the earth’s surface, the temperature will have more seasonal variation.
The earth acts as a thermal mass and will always draw the temperature of a sunken cellar closer to its own temperature which lags a couple of months behing outside air temp. This means in February in a cellar with a floor, say, 10 feet below the surface, the temperature will be cooler and in September it will be warmer. You can counter this effect with insulation and air conditioning. But it seems a bit counter-productive to fight against what the earth mass wants to do. Belive me, I live in Shanghai where all buildings have .3 meter thick (2 feet) concrete walls, floors and ceilings but no insulation. It’s nice and quite inside but you spend a bundle just trying to make the air warmer or cooler than the concrete. We would spend much less if the building were below ground but that’s so hard to achieve with a 50-story structure.
A sunken cellar is usually good insurance against a power blackout which, in August, might cook your investment in one day. And a sunken location can provide the other requirements. My best suggestion is sink the cellar, put R-60 insulation below the floor and R-30 in all the walls. Because of the damp conditions below the floor, your best choice of insulation material is extruded polystyrene (Styrofoam). You will most likely still need some air conditioning a few months or more, depending on how far south you are.
Ask a local builder or water board about water table/level, which will tell you if you dig into the earth whether it will fill with water or not, if it would then it is possible to fit a sump pump to remove water to your drains. If there is no problem with that then below ground will keep the temperature more stable even without room cooling. Remember wine needs constant temperature about 12-14 degrees C.
It’s preferred for the constant cool temperture and high humidity to have it in the basement. But if you do decide to have it upstairs, just make sure to keep it out of the sun. Sun is wine’s worst enemy. (After bottled of course)