When you decide to move your precious wine collection, there are several steps you will need to do to insure a safe move. The first thing you should do is have your collection appraised by a qualified appraiser. This will help set the value of the collection for insurance purposes, either for a personal property rider on your homeowner’s insurance or for the moving company’s insurance policy.

First-time wine cellar owners often dream of being able to select wines from their collections for decades to come. Unfortunately, unless you are buying delicate, heavy bodied wines from Old World vintners, you may find that your favorite wine may only be drinkable for a very short time.

On a warm Tuesday in June, my wife Emily gently told me she thought she might be pregnant with our first child. We hadn’t planned this, and I was having trouble adjusting to the idea. The next evening I was eating Chinese food , and when I opened the fortune cookie, I decided to interpret the fortune in light of whether Emily was pregnant.

For people who don’t want to do a complete make-over of their basements or a section of their home in order to build a custom wine cellar, a great option is the wine room. These storage units provide everything the home wine connoisseur needs to age and store wine.

If you aren’t going to drink the bottle of wine tonight, you might consider some form of wine racking system to keep your wines at their peak of flavor. Matt Pelarcik, owner of The Wine Rack Shop in Downington, Pennsylvania, has a variety of solutions, ranging from simple display racks to custom systems used in large wine rooms and cellars. Pelarcik has been manufacturing and distributing quality wine racks for five years. Because he has a web interface, Pelarcik is able to ship racks anywhere in the world. “We send racks to Great Britain and the Caribbean. Everywhere.”

So how many bottles of wine do you have? A few bottles? A case or two? Several cases? Do you really know? The first time I took inventory, I was a bit shocked at how many bottles we had accumulated. (And that was before we joined any wine clubs or mailing lists!)

When a wine collection begins to overflow a wine fridge or a collector begins to invest in high-end vintages, professional wine storage may be just the answer. These humidity and temperature controlled warehouses can store even delicate wines and offer ease of access to their clientele. These wine facilities are a phenomenon of the past decade and a half. “Wine as a commodity has exploded in the last few years. It’s a growing market. People are becoming more educated.,” says Tony Leventhal, manager and cellar master of Vintage Wine Warehouse in Queens, New York.

While shopping for wine way back in my early, overly enthusiastic days, I would commonly hear knowledgeable shopkeepers say lines akin to, “Oh, it’s relatively young now. So if you can’t wait, decant it for a couple of hours and it should be great.” Once I heard this, I took note and committed it to memory.

The Wine Cellar. ....a place for wine to grow to maturity without distraction. Dusty bottles sleeping in orderly rows, breathing with imponderable slowness in a dark, moist, cool climate. Candle-lit treasures of ancient Bordeaux, golden brown Sauternes, mellowed California cabernet, and crusted Port await behind an iron gate. The wine cellar conjures up different images to different people. But whatever the image, it is simply a place to store wine.

Serving temperatures for wine More wine is ruined by being too warm than too cold. A wine that is served too cold is easily warmed, but a wine served too warm can be difficult to chill. Therefore, when in doubt, serve it colder than you might think necessary. A wine that is too warm tastes...