A project I'm working on this week is to convert a section of my garage into a mini-winery space. This project is necessary because I hope to have some grapes to harvest in the next month and I want to have a space dedicated to fermenting and storing the wine under controlled conditions. There is a tradition of using a garages as a launch pad for ideas and businesses and I hope to honor that tradition in this series of blogs on my garage mini-winery.

There are three ambient conditions that I'm hoping to control in my mini-winery:

1. Temperature
2. Humidity
3. Air Quality

The main variable I'm concerned with first is Temperature. There are three temperature zones that I want to control:

1. The ambient winery room temperature.
2. The red wine fermentation temperature.
3. The white wine fermentation temperature.

In most of the wine making literature I've read, red and white wines are supposed to be fermented at different temperatures. Whites around 13 C (55 F) and reds around 30 C (86 F).

My first objective, however is to better control the ambient winery room temperature and then I can differentiate into controlling fermentation zone temperatures.

To control the ambient temperature of the mini-winery I'm building a room into a section of my garage. Yesterday, me and my son installed an 8 ft. x 12 ft. insulated floor. I chose this particular size so I wouldn't waste any wood and because it was close to the room dimensions I want. The actual dimensions of the room will be 7 ft. x 12 ft. because I don't want a window in the winery room. This is what the project looks like right now.

My son helped me with the mini-winery project when he got home from football practice. We got two walls insulated/vapored and linoleum down.

I'm thinking of going with thin plywood on the wall. I want to be able to easily remove panels if I have to. This project does not involve messing with the existing electrical setup of the garage which is non-ideal but workable.