Building a Wine Cellar Into a New-Build Home: What to Decide Before the Walls Go Up

The best time to plan a wine cellar is before the walls go up. Once the plaster is on, a cellar becomes a compromise: a cooling unit with nowhere to vent, racking that does not fit the space, a glass wall that heats the room it was meant to show off. If you are building or renovating a home, or a holiday house you will only live in for part of the year, these are the decisions to make on the drawings.

1. Put it in the right place

A cellar wants to be cool, dark and still. Below ground is easiest; otherwise a north-facing room against an internal wall. Keep it away from the plant room, the pool equipment, the kitchen and anything that vibrates. If you want the collection on show from the dining room, plan the view first and the insulation second, and accept that a glass wall needs more cooling.

2. Build the box properly

• Insulation and a vapour barrier on every wall, the ceiling and ideally the floor. A cold room in a warm house will draw in moisture if it is not sealed.
• A proper door, insulated and sealed all round. The most common weakness in a home cellar is the door.
• Lighting that gives off no UV and little heat, on a switch, not left burning.

3. Size the cooling, and give it somewhere to go

The cooling unit is the heart of the room and the part architects most often leave late. It needs power, a condensate drain and somewhere to dump its heat without annoying anyone, and it needs to be sized for the room, the insulation and the hottest week of the year where the house stands. The target is a steady 12 to 14 °C and 60 to 75 % humidity. Steadiness matters more than the exact number.

4. Size the racking for the collection you will have, not the one you have

A simple way to estimate capacity: the bottles you open in a year, multiplied by the number of years you would like to keep the best of them, plus a fifth for growth. Every cellar fills faster than planned. Include space for magnums and for cases, which arrive in wood and are often best kept that way.

5. Separate storage from service

The cellar keeps wine; a serving fridge near the kitchen or the terrace brings tonight’s bottles to temperature. Plan both: a dual-zone fridge for whites, rosé and champagne close to where you eat, and the cellar for everything that is resting.

6. A holiday home needs a cellar that looks after itself

A house that is closed for months is where cellars quietly fail: a tripped breaker in March, a cooling unit that stops in a heatwave, and nobody there to notice. Fit a temperature and humidity monitor that sends an alert, put the cooling unit on its own protected circuit, and make sure whoever looks after the house knows what to do when the alert arrives. Check that your insurance covers the contents at their value.

7. Then fill it with a plan

A first fill is easier with structure: mostly wines to drink over the next few years, a solid share to age, and a handful of special bottles for the occasions you can already see coming. Our guide to starting a collection sets out a split that works, and the home cellar checklist covers the conditions in more detail.

When the room is ready, we can stock it: tell us how you drink, what you would like to spend and when the house will be lived in, and we will put the first fill together and deliver it. Wines that are hard to find go through our rare wine sourcing service, and anything that should not sit in an empty house all winter can go into our climate-controlled storage near Antibes. See private wine cellar setup for how we work.