It’s a lor easier if you only put 8 or 10 bottles in a box. Much less exertion that way!
Most of his wine is probably older than he! ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
And if you really want to know his age, check him out on Wikipedia.
400 bottles moving only 10 miles is no problem. The wine won’t even warm up unless you park it somewhere and have a long lunch. Many distributors move a lot more than that every day and for far longer distances.
It’s like 34 boxes? Not quite? Not much at all. If you can’t move that much wine, you should probably see a doctor and you really shouldn’t be drinking alcohol!
Good luck.
Thought I would bump this thread…
Need to move my cellar to offsite storage this week. The house that my cellar is located within has been sold (not mine, free trustworthy storage was nice while it lasted) and I have rented a 36 case locker near my home…
So here’s what I did to prep…
Since all of my wine was on racking, i needed to get boxes. Looked into a few options and unfortunately, the best option was to spend $220 to buy heavy duty wine boxes from Uline.
I’ve boxed up all of my wine and organized by bin on cellartracker. I labeled each box on every corner with a letter. I’m going to look into some plastic crates for my magnums since boxes would be too much of a pain.
I’ll snap some photos when I get a chance.
Everything should stack inside the locker nicely…
Joel nice job on organizing them and entering them into CT (I wish I had the time when I had move mine). One thing you might consider is what order you place them in your offsite. Especially if you intend to store them in boxes. A real pain in the ass if the bottle you intend to drink is way in the back.
Every wine shop should have the boxes most French producers send the wine in, those narrow Bordeaux boxes that hold 12. Best way to move.
Yep. I did it with about 300 bottles, styro shipers, one trip AC on high. 13 miles. SUV, just me. Good luck!
just did about 40 boxes. quite a pain in the ass, but 100% doable.
Moved about 1000 bottles a couple of years ago during Texas summertime.
My steps
- Precool the SUV from the hubs of hell to a normal temp
- Leave AC running while loading
- Schlep
- Unload
- Repeat 4x
I used boxes from my LWS for the move and hand carried all of them, not a big deal, harder to move the cabinets than the bottles.
I know someone who moved hundreds of bottles from New Jersey to Maine in the summer time when he retired. He loaded the wine into a U-Haul trailer early in the morning and said it was still cool when he unloaded it in Maine many hours later.
I’ve been thinking about this too… I have a cellar of ~300 bottles, and it’s looking like it’s going to need to move from the east coast to the west coast sometime soon. That’s too big for a car, and I’m dreading the idea of driving a refrigerated U-Haul for 4 days. Are there services that will do this and not let the truck temperature spike too high?
If I were using a company, I would use some sort of temperature datalogger in case I needed to sue them for cooked wine.
I’d put a few of these in random cases. http://www.microdaq.com/logtag/trix-8.php?gclid=CJLTmJKV3L8CFSpp7AodNgQAuA
In fact, I may buy a few of these and see if EFW and a couple other stores would put them in the shippers for me. Would be interesting to see what ambient temps it’s exposed to.
Yes, there are shipping companies who will do this. I shipped 30 cases the other direction from California by refrigerated truck 20 years ago. I got the shipper’s name through a wine store on the West Coast. You might check with wine importers, since they likely receive wines on the East Coast and have to ship it west.
FedEx also offers this: http://ask.van.fedex.com/learn/wine-shipping
I shipped 170 cases from PA to CO in January using XPEDITR, Inc. They did a great job.
Byron
I moved my OWCs and Magnums, 3L & 6Ls today.
I picked up some plastic crates from Target for like $4 each. They work pretty good. Each holds 9 magnums with room to drop 4 375Ls in the side… They worked like a charm. I made sure the car was nice and cool, AC blasting for a while with the rear seat down. I backed it up, filled the trunk and backseat and was on my way.
My saving grace is that this place is only about 10 minutes from my house.
By the way, anyone in SoCal looking for storage, The Wine Country in Signal Hill/Long Beach just built brand new lockers. They are quite nice and I think the cost is pretty reasonable.
No affiliation BTW… To be honest, I really don’t even shop there much. But it is quite close and convenient for me.
FWIW, a couple years ago I moved my cellar of just over 300 bottles from Chicago to San Diego. After looking into the shipping costs (!), I did it myself, in my VW Passat. In non-shipper cardboard cases, I easily got 27 cases into the passenger compartment of the car, and drove across the country with the AC on high. While probably not the best idea for my shocks, the bottles stayed nicely cool the whole time. And I got to have the fun of rolling bell carts full of wine into the hotel each night on the way past bewildered guests.
Don’t rule out a car just yet!
Best,
-Marc
–
Marc Stubblefield
Perhaps you need to enroll in two-wheeler 101. 
I just moved 340 bottles from the house we just sold to a rental and will get to move it again at the end of August, hopefully to our new house. If the purchase falls through, I will get to move it again since the rental we are in has sold and we have to vacate at the end of August. Fun times.
I packed it mostly in boxes from my LWS with a few shippers mixed in. Loaded each box by hand into a small SUV. It took three loads, one a day after work.
Granted I was coming out of a condo with an elevator into a townhouse with one, but I thought the dolly was a life (?back) saver. I didn’t go crazy trying to balance 5 cases, but doing 2 at a time was WAY easier. Just depends on your situation.