🍷 Wine cellar

A wine cellar is a cool, dark room for storing and ageing wine. Most often it lies underground, sometimes in a hillside. The underground position itself provides what wine needs: even coolness and humidity. The temperature in a good cellar is usually around 10–14 degrees Celsius.

Cellars are of different kinds. There are cave cellars cut into tuff or chalk. In Georgia it is the marani, where qvevri are buried in the ground. In Moldova huge underground galleries such as Mileștii Mici and Cricova are known. A winery almost always has a cellar, often with barrels.

For wine, steady temperature, humidity and absence of vibration matter. Bottles are laid on their side so the cork stays moist. Mould often grows on cellar walls: "cellar mould" is usually harmless to the wine.

There is also a danger. During fermentation carbon dioxide builds up in a cellar, and it is heavier than air. In a closed room one can be poisoned by it, so ventilation is needed. A cellar master looks after the cellar. Similar cellars are also used for ripening cheese.