Wine Security: Keep Your Wine Locked & Safe From Others!

Recently I organised for my office (yes I have a real job! I, unfortunately, don’t just drink wine every day!) to go out to the Swan Valley and visit a few wineries on a Friday. On this tour, one of my workmates, in particular, loved the wines at Sittella and decided to stock up her collection. This was definitely good to see, however on Monday the horror story I heard was shockingly sad.

Apparently, over the weekend, her boyfriend and his mates, thought one of the exclusive, cellar-door-only bottles she bought was anyone’s for the taking. And you can guess what happened, it was all gone and she didn’t even get a taste!

It’s one of those devastating situations as I am sure all you fellow wine-lovers will agree. If you’re like me, then no doubt you’ll grow a certain affection and protective nature for certain bottles of wine – so protective in some cases that you won’t even trust family or friends to be around those certain bottles unsupervised. It may sound crazy to some, but honestly, I know completely how this feels.

So this got me thinking, and seeing as I recently caught up with the lovely owner of Lock, Stock & Farrell – a locksmith here in Perth – Craig gave me some inspiration to brainstorm some ideas around how us devoted protectors of our wines can ensure their safety from prying, undeserving palates.

Here are 5 ways you can literally keep your wine under lock & key from others:

1. Wine Bottle Locks

I actually came across these a couple of years ago. My parents were giving a bottle of wine to a good family friend and they decided to put a wine bottle lock on it. In order to get to the wine, the friend had to work out the puzzle first! Talk about working for your wine!

However, if you’re wanting a wine bottle lock for more personal use, you can find these online pretty readily. They typically have a 4-digit combination lock on top. Simply search Google for ‘wine bottle lock‘ and you’ll see what I mean.

2. Wine Safe

Okay, it may seem a bit extreme, but if you had a bottle of Penfolds Grange or perhaps Romanée-Conti DRC – then you probably need a serious protection strategy. With over 20 years experience in the locksmithing business in Perth, Craig suggested putting these in a safe. Obviously, this needs to be in a safe which is kept in the right wine storing conditions to ensure the quality of the wine. However, his top tip was to look for a second-hand safe in order to reduce costs. I like how he thinks!

I can just imagine myself getting a safe delivered and Mr. Spittoon asking me why the heck I’m loading our (my) prized champagne bottles into it. And then of course why I maybe fibbed about how to get into it :-/

3. Locakable Wine Fridge

Similar to the above and a good option to ensure your wines are kept in tip-top condition. There are a number of brands who sell wine fridges that are lockable by key so that you can hide the key from unwanted palates. Just be careful about where you put the key as it would be a horrible situation if you lost it. FYI: Lock, Stock & Farrell also cut keys in their Cannington store 😉

Here are some brands which sell lockable wine fridges to check out:

• Vintec
• iLive Wine Cellars
• Dometic Consummuate

4. Anything that can be locked with a key

Obviously, you can store aka ‘hide’ your wine anywhere and can rest assure it’s safe it’s under lock and key. This could be a room in your house, a desk drawer, a briefcase – the possibilities are endless really. Just don’t forget to think about the storage conditions prior to doing this. The worst thing is to buy a very nice bottle of wine or to keep one for many years and then open it to find it’s gone bad!

Hopefully, these tips may help a few of you out! A big thanks to Craig from Lock, Stock and Farrell for giving me the inspiration for this slightly, yet deadly serious blog post! If you have any wine ‘security’ tips of your own, please make sure to leave a comment below!

And PS: for the Mum’s and Dad’s out there, the above wine locking methods also do a great job at keeping the young or older kids out of your wine collection 😉