Why Build a Wine Cellar

I know that a basement wine cellar is designed to store wine, but don’t stop there. You have a room that is both temperature and humidity controlled, so think for a minute: what else can you store in a wine cellar? If you are a gardener, the answer is simple: vegetables.

At the end of the year I harvested my potato crop, and I want to store them into the winter. What better place than a wine cellar?

Potatoes Stored in Wine Crate

Since this was my first year growing potatoes, I didn’t have a huge crop for storage, so I took the easy approach and took an old wine crate, and filled it with large potatoes. Next year when I have more potatoes I’ll get bigger containers, and store the potatoes in a crate filled with sand, or saw dust, or some other medium to retain moisture while keeping the potatoes separated.

I found that potatoes stored this way will easily keep for three months or more (after three months we had consumed them, so I don’t know how much longer they would have lasted). The same approach worked for carrots and kohlrabi as well.

So, when planning your wine cellar, be sure to select some wine cellar racks that will allow you to store vegetables for the winter. But here’s a tip: don’t store apples and potatoes in the same room; the apples give off a gas that makes potatoes germinate, so unless you want them to germinate, store them in separate rooms.

Tagged as: vegetables in wine cellar

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