Historic Wine Cellars

For centuries, the storage and preservation of fine wines has been a hobby amongst connoisseurs. Wine itself was almost certainly discovered by accident as a natural progression of the spoilage of grapes. By 4000 BC, grapes were being cultivated and wine was being stored underground; the first arbors and pruning methods of grape vines were used by the Egyptians, and sunken jars have been discovered in that area as an indication that these early wine drinkers had discovered the effects of temperature on wine.

While holes in the ground may have been the early wine cellars, things have developed significantly since then. By the 1850s, a Hungarian soldier and merchant named Agoston Harazsthy was importing cuttings from Europe's greatest vineyards to the area of California. Considered the founder of California's booming wine industry, Harazshty created the Buena Vista Winery and was the first to dig extensive caves for use as wine cellars in that area.

The key to wine cellars, as has been gradually discovered over time, is that the wine must be stored between 53 to 58 degrees Farenheit. Wine is a fragile balance of amino acids, carbohydrates and other chemicals, and the aging process as well as the taste of the wine depend largly on storage time and temperature. In order to prevent the wine from being disturbed and to maintain the proper temperature, people have been storing wine underground in wine cellars for a long time.

In the modern world, wine cellars are not always possible or practical. Thus people have developed the use of wine cabinets, which provide much of the same conditions as a wine cellar without having to be located underground. A wine cabinet should allow the wine to be stored on its side and should allow the user to remove one bottle without disturbing the others. A proper wine cabinet with cooling system has been developed to ensure proper temperature and a mimicing of wine cellar conditions.