Moving a wine cellar

I’m moving my ~400 bottle cellar across town (under 10 miles). Most of the moving companies won’t even take alcohol. Assuming the weather is OK, I’m thinking this is something I can do myself in 2-3 trips (will have 2 large vehicles). In anticipation of this day I’ve been saving wine shippers and box inserts, so I’ve got a decent amount of packing materials. I can also round up a ton of wine cases from local liquor stores. Any thoughts/suggestions/advice appreciated. Apologies if this has been covered before, I did a search but didn’t see anything relevant. Thanks.

I just move 30 cases of wine from my townhouse to an off-site storage about 15 miles away. Fortunately I was able to use their storage boxes for the move. They weren’t protected like shippers, but basically looked like Bordeaux cases, but cardboard. Much more space efficient and only had two insert trays for the wine to rest upon. It took me two trips in an SUV. It was simple. Perhaps just throw some blankets over top of the boxes so that the sun isn’t beating down on them.

I moved about the same number of bottles three miles three years ago when I moved from my condo to a house. I packed the wine in shippers, loaded up my car and made several trips. I have seen a few unfortunate stories of unprotected wines being accidentally broken over the years so I would definitely recommend packing them in shippers.

Good luck with the move.

Not long ago (90+ temp.) I went to a local Ryder office and asked if they rented refridgerated trucks for a single day. The clerk replied, “sure, one of your’s broken?” I told him that I didn’t own any but that I needed to move my personal wine collection. He was kind of caught off guard and said that they ordinarily only rent the refridgerated ones to commercial customers. Well to sum up: they did, I did, the back of the truck stayed at 58 degrees, and it was quite affordable.

If you’re doing this this month, you might want to do it first thing in the morning, before temperatures rise and the sun gets higher in the sky. But there’s a lot of thermal mass in 400 bottles, so as long as you don’t let the cases at the outer edges get hot, you should be OK for the distance you’re talking about. You could put styro shippers on top if you’re worried about the heat, but they are much bulkier.

I moved 25 cases from the suburbs to the city a few weeks ago and had to leave the rented SUV with the wine on the street overnight. It was in the 70s but I wasn’t really worried about the wine. And, indeed, in the morning the bottles were still well below the outside temperature. And these were all in cardboard cartons, no styro. My biggest worry was not heat damage but that some homeless person might smash the window and start glugging Volnay and Barolo.

Having done this, my advice is hand carry all boxes. More accidents occur when trying to use a 2 wheel truck (dolly) especially going over door-jams, down steps etc. Just take the the time to carry them.
Good luck

Moved a ridiculous amount of wine from CA to OR 6 weeks ago, moving company took care of my antique wine closet.

No bottles broken and I used rudimentary shippers.

Closet was laid on its side by moving company and something heavy was stored on top of it warping one of the wood walls. This affects closure of the door on that side but it doesn’t seem bad enough for me to undergo what I’m sure would be a futile search for repair.

Hear you! I am moving my cellar tomorrow is balmy PR weather…

You can always consider a cellar-thinning party to lighten the load you have to move…

I have begun to move my cellar of roughly 40,000 bt from one town to another town in September 2012. I will tell the story when it will be finished, probably before the end of this year.

This is an experience to do once, but never twice.
I thought my body would look like the one of Schwarzenegger or like Stallone, due to the weight lifted.
No chance, this did not happen.
For the moment, two bottles broken by my fault.
some anecdotes to come !!!

You are talking maybe 15 minutes travel time in the car (and I’d imagine under 1 hour from taking the wine out of the cellar and getting it into the new cellar)…there are zero worries about the wine raising in temp enough to make a difference. As long as the wine is packed safely (in boxes) then you shouldn’t have any issues. I move wine all of the time between off site locations and home cellars without issue. <35 cases shouldn’t take that long to move.

For a second I thought you said 40,000.

40K while it sounds like a lot of wine really isn’t that much…

Sucks to move that much.

As an individual that amount is unthinkable. That’s like buying almost three bottles a day for the next 40 years. I suppose “a lot” is quite a subjective term.

Does anyone what age bracket Francois falls in?

I guess it’s all what you get used to…

Any reason it needs to be done in one day? It’s not a big deal to do in one day, but if you can spread it out why not? Less likely to have issues/breakage if not hurrying. 10 years ago I built cellar in new house. Packed up a lot of wine (just standard cardboard for most part, it’s quicker than shippers), then moved 8-10 cases at a time using a medium sized SUV. I had 50 ft walk on one end, 50 ft and then down to cellar on other. Took me maybe 15 minutes to load, short drive (blasting AC despite it being early fall), 20-30 minutes to unload each day. I was done by 9 AM each day. No breakage, no conceivable harm to wine.

My only issue was discovering how bad my inventory was, I built cellar for 800 bottles thinking I had 650, discovered I had 900. Luckily I didn’t need to get out of old cellar.

Bring most of it to the picnic tomorrow and we’ll take care of it for you

Matt,
This is a piece of cake. Don’t over think it - it’s not like you’re replying to Fitz in the politics thread.

35 cases is a decent sized SUV in two, maybe three moves. Not a chance in hell you worry about heat or worry about the AM, or the PM, or if there is haze or a full moon or if Tawd is posting choreographed shit from his wedding on Facebook (totally defriended him after that puke-fest). And, we aren’t talking about gems from Francois’s cellar that died decades ago either.

Box, pack, hump, load, drive, unload, hump, unpack, rack. Repeat. 35 times.
Or 34 times and open the last case with your friends at your new home.

My 2 cents. YMMV.

Oh, and from the looks of it, this is MN - when your temp broaches 80 degrees, then we can discuss a more nuanced approach that would require the planning accuracy and timing to rival that of a Seal Team 6 excursion.

Having done this with about twice as many bottles about 12 years ago, I’ve got to agree wholeheartedly with Freemott. Now, I’ve got enough wine that I need to live in this house until I die…