Underground Cellar is Changing the Way Wine Enthusiasts Buy and Store Wine

Aside from drinking, one of the things wine lovers enjoy is wine curation. Most wine enthusiasts love to own a cool cellar where they can show off their collection, one that is personal to their taste. But building and maintaining a wine collection is both expensive and time-consuming. Buying the wine is the easy part; the difficult part is storing it. If done poorly, all that wine gathered in the cellar can go bad. But if preserved the right way, wine can last for decades, its value and quality appreciating with its age.

When building a cellar, one has to consider a climate-controlled environment that wouldn’t affect the taste of the inventory and, by extension, their market value. In the storage environment, the following have to be considered:

• light
• humidity
• temperature
• vibration

The UV from sunlight can make wine age prematurely, and this affects the quality of its taste. A place that is too damp can cause molds to form, and even though it may not affect the wine, it may ruin their labels. If the environment is too hot, the flavor and aroma of the wine are affected; if it’s too cold, the corks may shrink and let in air, which will ruin the wine.

However, with everything going digital now, there is a way to own a collection without the stress of building and maintaining a physical storage: CloudCellar.

What is CloudCellar?

CloudCellar is run by Underground Cellar, a Y Combinator-backed startup. They run a membership where members of their online community can accumulate and store wine in their state-of-the-art wine cellar. Their wine cellar is located at Napa Valley, CA, and can be observed remotely by wine owners. It makes easy the wine curating experience by helping wine enthusiasts own a collection without the baggage that accompanies its maintenance. Members have the liberty to, over time, mix their cellar with a variety of wine products suited to them. When they are ready to open the cellar, all that is required is the click of a button

CloudCellar can ship to nearly anywhere in the US, and they have this fun option where the wine bottles can arrive chilled if required by the wine owner.