In many places, however, the weather simply does not allow for such convenience. The situation is far from hopeless, and regardless of whether your home is in the desserts of Arizona, the humid heat of Mississippi or the intolerable summers of Tel Aviv,, solutions are neither that difficult nor expensive to come by. The conditions needed for ideal wine storage are darkness, freedom from vibration, fairly high humidity and, most critically of all, a reasonably even temperature. Darkness is needed because natural ultraviolet light and bright artificial light penetrates even dark green glass bottles and hastens premature aging. All of these, however are secondary to the temperature at which wine is stored.
Wines hate being subjected to extremes of heat or cold or to wide temperature variation.
More than anything, they react badly to high temperatures. Even though nearly everyone agrees that wines in a cold cellar will mature more slowly and keep longer than wines in a relatively warm one, not all agree on this precise temperature range and several world famous restaurants keep their wines at a permanent 18 degrees Celsius. Although red wines can be stored at as much as 20 degrees Celsius for several months without fear of damage, they will age more rapidly and this temperature is far from ideal. It also has the advantage of leaving the white wines in the cellar at or nearly at their perfect serving temperature. Planning a Cellar So long as space is physically available, the construction of a wine cellar in one's home or apartment is not as expensive or difficult as it might seem.