An increasingly popular sight in a lot of people’s homes these days is the wine room! Whether down in the basement to make it a true wine cellar, or just somewhere in an unused guest room now that the kids have moved out (not that anyone here has done that), storing and displaying your wine collection has become an increasingly popular way to decorate your home and give all those wine bottles somewhere to be. And it doesn’t have to be a huge process, either! If you’re not the carpenter-type and aren’t interested in trying to hand-carve your own ornate wine racks, we’ve got some easy tips here to give yourself a wine room without a ton of effort, remodeling, or sawdust! Find the right room: The first step is to decide where it’s going. Like we mentioned above, it doesn’t have to be strictly in the basement. Anywhere in your house that you can keep cool and largely sun-free is perfect; extra rooms are fine so long as you don’t mind hanging some heavy curtains to block out sunlight. If you have a basement with an unused corner, this could be ideal, but don’t be afraid to look around if this isn’t going to work with your current home. (Also make sure you can keep it around 55 degrees, as this is the recommended ideal temperature for wine storage.) Get your bottles ready: Next, try to get your bottles ready for storage. Even if you only have a handful of wines you want to stash down there, proper labeling and storage is key to keeping everything safe and drinkable. Make sure the corks or stoppers are all properly replaced and leak-free, and try to decide on a labeling system - most wine racks don’t let you see the label too easily, so a lot of home wine storage experts like to use some kind of tagging system or paper labels on the top or bottom of the bottles to help keep everything easy to get to. Grab some racks: Arguably the most important step, you’ll have to decide exactly what wine racks you’re using and how to best get them into your new wine room. There’s a few approaches you can take - are you looking for something a bit more decorative and wall-mounted, or are you looking for strictly function to store your vast array? Try to figure out if you need something more practical like metal wine racks or wire wine racks or if you want to go for the look of wood. This will inform how the room is arranged and how your wine will be best stored for the long term. Organize the room: After you’ve settled on a location and figured out what racks you’re using, you’ll then want to get the room organized and ready to go. Clear out whatever you have to in order to free up space and get to organizing: make a floor plan to decide where your racks are going and try to maximize every inch of space to make sure there’s enough room for all of your racks. Finally, stock up and enjoy: Once everything is where it’s supposed to be, all you have to do now is set your bottles up! Come up with an organization plan to your liking - by year, type, vineyard, etc - and put everything away. Next time you need to find the right wine for dinner, you’ll be glad you took a second to arrange it all!