It can happen to anyone. At least, any oenophile.
A lone case of wine stashed under a staircase or in a closet blooms slowly, quietly consuming more and more real estate until you suddenly realize you've become a collector and your collection is a space hog.
Step One is accepting what you and your wine have become. Step Two is figuring out what to do about it.
Wine can be a persnickety possession. Heat, temperature fluctuations and light are its worst enemies. What it likes is a dark place where the temperature is a constant 10 to 13 C and the humidity stays around 70 per cent.
Which doesn't matter if you're the sort who just buys a bottle or two here and there to drink with dinner. But if you have bottles that are worth aging, or you stash hundreds of bottles, those factors matter greatly.
Which leaves you with three choices - build a real cellar at home, buy a specialized refrigerator to install at home or rent space in a climate-controlled storage facility.
Here's some of what you should consider.
For people who want their wine close by, want to earn serious wine cred and are willing to pay a hefty sum to convert a room or basement, a private cellar is the way to go.
Downsides include price. Costs - which include equipment to control temperature and humidity - depend on how elaborate and large you want to go, but can easily run in the thousands of dollars.
The good news is that even small cellars can hold a decent wine collection.
It's wise to get expert advice when designing a cellar. Anecdotal stories circulate of collections ruined when stored by an outside wall that froze during a brutal cold snap.
You also need to account for issues such as power and equipment failures, even flooding.
"During the big Westchester floods last spring, I had a friend who spent eight hours bailing water," says Lettie Teague, executive wine editor at Food & Wine magazine.
Creating a home cellar can be as simple as putting up shelves in a basement that has a consistent temperature or as elaborate as retrofitting a room with custom-designed racks, art work, crown moulding, grape-vine inlays or whatever else your imagination can conjure.
One design consultant based in Colorado says a hot new trend is to have the wine "cellar" displayed through a glass wall as part of the living space.
Tyson Jones says the company he works for - Wine Cellar Innovations - has done cellars around the U.S. for well over $200,000, and one in Eastern Europe for $300,000. He's currently working on a project in Colorado that incorporates a hidden door into a multimillion-dollar art gallery.
"We want to create a space that complements the house and the people living in it," Jones says. "If the rest of the house is real opulent, then that's what we'll do. We'll go big."
Wine refrigerators offering temperature and humidity controls are widely available in a variety of price ranges and sizes that can accommodate anywhere from a dozen bottles to 500 bottles.
These units have come a long way in recent years, with many models designed to look like furniture or to be the focal point of a room, rather than merely an adjunct to your kitchen appliances.
Wine refrigerators have experienced a major boom in recent years, according to the editor and publisher of Wine Enthusiast Magazine.
