How and Why to Build a Wine Cellar, Fourth Edition

by Richard M. Gold

This popular classic, which is based on the author’s personal experiences of building a wine cellar in his home and collecting wines for fun and investment, is now completely updated for the modern wine collector. All of the essential construction specifications to maintain the ideal temperature and humidity conditions for long-term storage of wine are provided for the home craftsman or professional contractor. Insulation, refrigeration, and passive systems are detailed and the construction of racks and storage bins is also explained with helpful illustrations. A practical guide to selecting, recording, tracking, and enjoying your wines at their peak performance is included.

Genres: Wine

264 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 1984

Reviews

[JMarie]

A more accurate title for this book would be "Trial and Error: A Detailed Memoir About How NOT to Build a Wine Cellar". I am DNF'ing because i want information about wine and storing it, not a detailed accounting of every step gone wrong in the process of reinventing the proverbial wheel.

[Robert Okun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important book

Discusses many important topics thoroughly. Insightful and very well done. If you're serious, this book is for you. It covers more than just building a cellar.

[Bruce]

Life goals.

Mine is a first edition and it looks like the author printed and bound it himself on his kitchen table.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Readability 6. Rating 6. An odd and unique book of one man's fascination and love of wine. Much of it is as the title suggests, based in Gold's experience and research. It is a bit rough, and not complete, but covers a great deal of both theoretical and exceedingly practical knowledge. Beyond this, Gold shares his methodology for collecting wines. He seems to really only care about Bordeaux wines, and he feels that wine drinking is driven by occasions - how many birthdays, weddings, etc., happen in your life times the number of bottles needed for each. From this stems a detailed discussion of how to set up a wine tasting "club" and host a wine tasting meeting. For me the contrast was interesting - to me, wine is a wonderful part of life, to him it largely is his life. In the end, the book gave me some insights and a basis for evaluating whether or not a professional is knowledgeable enough to build a cellar for us. That, I think, made it a successful effort.

[Nick Cheek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really a solid reference if you're looking into installing a wine cellar in your home. More focused on a "passive" cellar, but contains plenty of solid nuggets of info if, like me, you're looking at an actively cooled cellar instead. This book, along with freely available online resources, allowed me to spec out my cellar rather than relying on one of the luxury boutique cellar design/construction firms. Saved $1K+ easily.

Call it a 4.5/5, as this could probably use an update, and contains a lot of tangential (imo) sections on the "why" to build a cellar portion. Doubt anyone seeking this book out really needs convinced of the benefits of cellaring wine, and the process of wine acquisition. Still without peer.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good general wine book but too general for what the title would seem to imply.