A good wine cellar will protect the wine from these influences and allow it to age and develop as it should

Date: January 27, 2011

Once you’ve decided on having a wine cellar and begun to buy your wines, you’ll need a place to store them. The word ‘cellar’ always brings to mind a basement of sorts, but for wine that’s not a necessity. What you need is a place where your wines can be kept safely and well. Cellaring is important to the ageing of good wines: many environmental factors can affect them, like heat, cold, humidity, sunlight – or even odours like fumes from a central heating boiler.

A good cellar will protect the wine from these influences and allow it to age and develop as it should. If you should possess a cellar, it will almost certainly need to be adapted for storing wine. The walls should be lined to ensure that dampness is kept at bay and to help stabilise the temperature; if there is no provision for ventilation it should be provided, or a window that provides too much should be closed off. Strengthening the door and providing it with a strong lock is a good idea, as a cellar full of wine is an increasingly valuable asset. The most important element is the temperature: 11 degrees centigrade is ideal. Try to keep the humidity, which you can measure with a hygrometer, at around 75%. If it’s too dry, a bowl of water filled with charcoal will raise the humidity, if it’s too damp silica gel will bring it down. If you don’t possess an actual cellar you can either buy a ready-made cellaring unit which holds from 50 – 500 bottles, or you can build your own in a corner of a storage area. The important thing is to bear in mind the environmental influences that affect wine and ensure that your storage area will protect your wine from them.

Once you have your storage area you’ll need to think about the racks that hold the wine. You can buy wire wine racks that stack, which are economical and easy to fix. Their drawback is that they are wasteful on space, and no matter how big your cellar it will certainly seem too small in a year or two. The most efficient way to store the wine bottles is stacked one on top of one another. To do this you need to make divisions that will hold multiples of 12 – say 24, 36, or 48. Stacking the bottles two deep on their sides will still allow you access while saving space. The wines that will be ready for drinking the soonest you stack at the front, those with ageing still to complete, at the back.

Apart from the basic storage facilities there are other refinements that a good cellar needs: a maximum/minimum thermometer to check the stability of the temperature, a hygrometer to keep a check on the humidity and a cellar book. The cellar book is your record of last resort: it’s here that you record the date and cost of each purchase, when it’s projected maturity is, and of course your tasting notes.

Different wines are made to mature at different times. At one end of the scale there are the good Bordeaus, which can take up to twelve or more years to reach maturity. At the other end are the Beaujolais Nouveaus and the Novellos which are probably past their peak by the Christmas following their vinification, just a few months later. This should be borne in mind not only while arranging the cellar, but also while buying. You should try, as far as possible, to ensure that the wines in your cellar will mature at different times – allowing you to enjoy a variety of wines, rather than a flush all at one time. As a general rule keep your whites at the bottom and your reds above them; wines left to age go to the back and those ready for drinking soonest, nearest the front.

It’s a good idea to make a distinction between wine that you might drink for supper on a weekday night and wines that are bought for maturing in your cellar. These wines are in part investment and in part there to allow for a special treat when the occasion allows. Many New World wines are designed to be drunk young and therefore do not necessaril y benefit for long-term storage in a cellar. Wines from Bordeaux, and to a lesser extent Burgundy, benefit from bottle ageing, so the mainstay of your cellar should reflect this.

A suggestion might be this: a fifty-bottle cellar could be broken down into twenty Bordeaux, twenty Burgundy and ten Cotes de Rhone, the split between red and white being determined by your personal preference. Some good classed growth reds of a good vintage (consult a wine-book for lists of vintages) and a few dessert whites such as Sauternes or Barsac could complete your Bordeaus. From the Burgundy perhaps half red, such as classed growths from the Cotes de Nuits and Cotes de Beaune, as well as some good whites, like Montrachet, Meursault and Chablis. Finally from the Rhone, reds like Cotes Rotie, Hermitage, San Joseph and Chateau Neuf-du-Pape and whites like Condrieu and Hermitage.

Once your cellar’s up and running, you can enjoy the thought that you have an investment that is also a continuing pleasure. And there aren’t too many of those around.

Source: http://www.foodandwine.net/wine/wine0003.htm

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Getting to this fine dining restaurant of Angeles City Clark Freeport Zone Pampanga Philippines
How to get to this fine-dining restaurant in Clark Philippines? Once you get to Clark Freeport, go straight until you hit Mimosa. After you enter Mimosa, stay on the left on Mimosa Drive, go past the Holiday Inn and Yats Restaurant (green top, independent 1-storey structure) is on your left. Just past the Yats Restaurant is the London Pub.