Starting a Home Cellar Part 3: Storage

As long as it’s a dark and dry space, wine doesn’t have to be stored in a cellar.

Most wine needs to be stored horizontally. Ozgur Coskun/Shutterstock

Starting a wine cellar isn’t complicated, but once you decide to stash 20 or 30 bottles of wine, a key decision is where it should go.

The worst location is where it is 70 degrees F or more. Wine is fragile and, like beer, must be kept cool to retain freshness and perhaps even improve in the bottle. Cooler is better.