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Now is the great time to get into wine storage and keep those reds in your cellar or under your bed. Don’t you want to have your own wine cellar? You won’t need to renovate your home. A wine cellar can simply be a few cases of red you keep in a cupboard for a number of years.

During this time, your wine begins to evolve from youthful awkwardness to mellow maturity. A pure pleasure to be experienced is consuming a well aged, mature bottle of wine. So you should get wine cellar started.

It is well documented that we are experiencing a wine glut, mostly with premium red wines such as cabernet sauvignon. This situation occurs at the same time as a big shake up with major wine producers Southcorp, Orlando Wyndham and Hardy, and also rising retail competition between Coles Myer and Woolworths.

With wholesale wine distribution been impacted, some larger names including Tuckers have disappearing with new mega-relationships being formed. While wine sales overseas continues to grow for lower end wines, many premium grapes remained are unsold and often unpicked.

Once you’ve determined what wine you want to buy, researching for prices and special on the internet or wine publications is easy. See Houghton, Saltram and Yalumba, Penfolds, Wynns, Hardy. Consider some adding smaller wines to your collection such as Tahbilk, Knappstein, d’Arenberg, Peter Lehmann and St Hallett. Plus you’ll always find newer players are also trying to move up.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by the countless number of wines on the shelf, find yourself a good independent bottle shop to get great advise. While maybe not be the cheapest, independent advice may lead to you buying some very valuable wines over time and avoid the duds.

If you’ve decided to store wine, you need to find a cool spot to keep them, ideally a cool place in the garage. Alternatively, go to a storage facility such as Wine Vault, Wine Ark or Kennards and rent some space.Start off with some great 2002 wines and consider some well known 2003 vintages, then the wait begins.

Most red wines are meant to be stored from two to five years, comparatively your bolder, full-bodied reds from should be stored from six to eight years – with some twice that amount of time.

South Australia with its shiraz and cabernet sauvignon grapes, remains the true home of the traditional full-bodied reds. In the Barossa Valley the favourite wines such as Grant Burge, Barossa Valley Estate and Peter Lehmann can be found while some newer brands including Glaetzer, Thorn Clarke and Two Hands are also worth noting. McLaren Vale has some great new wineries such as Mr Riggs, Dowie Doole and Kangarilla Road, to accompany some more established bands like Woodstock, Wirra Wirra, Maglieri, Geoff Merrill and Tatachilla.

Clare Valley names has great labels such as Mitchell, Pikes, Sevenhill, Tim Adams and Kilikanoon who provide earnest, earthy reds for affordable prices. While Coonawarra has emerging winemakers Majella, Penley Estate and Balnaves to accompany their established as Bowen, Leconfield, Hollick and Rymill wineries.

Heathcote region is the best stored Victorian shiraz while you should also look to Jasper Hill, Heathcote Winery and Hanging Rock, Shelmerdine, Heathcote Estate and Shadowfax.

Grampian Red Wines are a great wine to store with Seppelt a leading label plus Mount Langi Ghiran and Great Western. Then look to cabernets from Nagambie Lakes (Tahbilk and Mitchelton) and shiraz and cabernet from the Pyrenees (Taltarni, Warrenmang and Dalwhinnie).

When looking at Western Australia and especially Margaret River, you can find such well reown and rarely disappointing cabernet blends including Cape Mentelle, Cullen and Moss Wood. When looking to New South Wales, you’ll find great red wines to store in in Mudgee. Poet’s Corner reds such as Montrose Black Shiraz and Henry Lawson Cabernet Sauvignon are also great value.

Most wine lovers like the idea of building a wine cellar but most of us fear that the entire task would be too difficult, costly and not worth the effort. If you, too, thought this then banish these thoughts from your mind because it is in fact quite easy to build a wine cellar and you can do so on a limited budget in the available free space in your home. In fact, if you are researching ideas to help you in constructing a wine cellar you will be pleased to know that there are now many different types of kits that are quite inexpensive and which will assist you to build a wine cellar at an affordable price.

Affordable Price

Most kits currently available today can be purchased at a reasonable price and kits are available in different sizes and types to ensure that when it comes to building a wine cellar you will find your task a lot simpler than you ever anticipated. You can in fact choose to go about building a wine cellar in the form of rectangle shaped bins, or choose places for storing entire cases of wines and even use available space to create triangular wine storage shelves.

The best part about building a wine cellar from a kit is that the kits will not prove to be at all difficult to assemble and there is also no need to have any prior experience in construction to build your wine cellar. And, of course each kit has its accompanying manuals and these will provide step-by-step instructions to build a wine cellar that will guide you in building a wine cellar without facing any hassles along the way.

The price of the kits depends on the type of materials used and also on the size of the kit and if the quality of materials used is superior then the cost will go up and vice versa. The bottom line when building a wine cellar from this type of kit is that you will get a most cost effective solution that is far cheaper than constructing a custom built cellar and certainly far cheaper than most other options.

When you have finished building your wine cellar you can turn your attention to how best you can manage your wine cellar. One option open to you in this regard is to make use of wine cellar software. It doesn’t matter if you only store a few bottles of your favorite wine to have with dinner or you have thousands of bottles stored in your wine cellar; proper cellar management will ensure you get the greatest benefit out of your wine and your cellar.