What do you know image in your mind when you think of caves? Caving or maybe crawl through a small space may come to mind. Perhaps the experience of absolute and total darkness, the degree of darkness so dark you can not see your hand in front of you? Perhaps you imagine weird things like spiders, cobwebs or other imaginable things in the dark. Caves call different ideas and feelings of many people. One idea is an ideal environment for the age of the wine in oak barrels or age a sparkling wine in a bottle.

Caves for thousands of years used for wine storage in various parts of the world. The Voyage of Traveler Wine of Sonoma and Napa Valley in California, we have experienced several caves. Chinese workers built some of the caves in the end of 1800, after the work was completed at the railroad. These workers built miles of caves with the use of hoes, axes and shovels. In contrast, the caves are also built with modern technology, like a car Welsh mining. The walls were sprayed with cement, a mixture of sand, cement and pea gravel.

Some the caves were covered very clean and lit by electric means, even onions or electrical overload wall lamps elegant. Other caves were dark and candles or lanterns lit to give a romantic glow of the oak barrels along the side walls. Some of the caves has shown a growth of lichens hanging a few feet from the ceiling. One wonders why they never cleaned with a broom or vacuum cleaner. We have seen thousands of bottles, shows the dust off years.Early quiet tenants who came to Napa and Sonoma regions of Europe in 1800 were familiar with the use of caves.

We wandered through two cave systems of the deceased. 'S 1800 An advantage of the caves is the temperature control. Cave temperature is constant and often years varies only very little. It makes no difference if the outside temperature is 110 ° F or 10 ° C, a cave system that is often a constant temperature between 57 and 64 degrees F. Keeping all these cool temperatures, it provides an ideal environment for aging wines. This constant temperature is also an economic advantage for a cellar.

Less resources are spent on heating or cooling in a cave of a building. Often, the soil above the cave can be planted with grapevines.A second advantage of the dark cave. Light can damage the wine and the caves are dark. This darkness is subjected to a particular advantage in the sparkling wine bottles.Humidity control aging in glass is a third advantage of a system of caves. Oak barrels to breathe. Some of the wine evaporates. When the humidity is high, the wine evaporates less. In some cases, the amount of evaporation cavity of 6% was reduced to 1%.

This is also an economic bonus for a wine cellar for less than is needed to complete the barrels.Although lichen hanging from the ceiling seemed strange in a winery we visited, it really helps to filter the air in the cellar cave.Some a surface that can be used for special occasions. The atmosphere can be a rewarding experience. All these benefits with an interest in building new cavity has led in the 1980s. Expect to see more of the wine caves built in the future.