I have a offsite / 3rd Party storage locker for a good portion of my wine but I keep running into the same issue…I don’t think that I am using the space most effectively.
Do others have ideas around how best to organize these places - it is easy for regular sized wood boxes but with wines like SQN that come in odd sizes or with a mix of magnums / 750s it is a little all over the map. Also, some of my wines don’t have OWCs so I have them in regular cardboard boxes that seem to be all sorts of different sizes.
If there is something that folks buy (standard strong storage boxes, etc.) that would be most helpful to understand!
my lockers i use tubes. Each cabinet can fit 40 tubes. Each tube is double deep. THen on top you can put magnums. There’s enough space in the front to stand up bottles horizontal double deep
The Weinboxes continue to work well for me. I don’t keep any other types of boxes in my locker (of course, I’m not enough of a baller to be receiving stuff in OWCs). For my locker size, I’m able to almost max it out with Weinboxes. Within the boxes, I have no organization system. Bottles just go wherever there is room. Every box has a number, and I record which box each bottle is in in CT.
The dimensions of the lockers matter as well. In my case the dimensions of the Weinboxes were a bit funky and didn’t allow me to maximise the space. I found that standard 12 bottle corrugated boxes from U-Line allowed me to fit more.
Yes, the dimensions make a big difference. In that other thread you can see a photo of my locker. They fit four across and four high, with maybe 6 inches left over on the side and 8-10 inches on the top, so not complete maximization, but still pretty good. And I need some space on the top to be able to move them in and out. Then they can fit two deep in that direction, and I can fit another couple stacks in front of those turned 90 degrees. Purely doing the math, I could fit more in my locker with some other kind of box that truly uses all of the space, but in practice I found that the weinboxes are more efficient for me so I end up getting more usable storage. Obviously YMMV.
Write on the box what is inside. And then make a list that you put in front of your locker. So when you open it, you know that the box with your SQN is towards the back on the left. I don’t know how many boxes you have, but as long as you’re storing in lockers, it’s a little hard to remember exactly what bottle is in which box so you just have to hunt. But numbering your boxes and keeping a list in the locker is a way to start.
Well, its not offsite, but I organize my wines by expected drink year. I’ll label a wooden box or weinbox 2025, 2030, etc, and just let em sit. I don’t bother to list whats inside. When the year comes to check the box, I’ll figure out what is actually ok to drink, vs what needs more time.
this is interesting!
how do you handle drink over time? say u get a box of 12 bottles of some bdx… you won’t drink them all in one year right?
do u pull one out and put it into different bins?
I moved my racking to another room in Weinboxes, kept the original racking order. All the new wines previously stored in Weinboxes on the floor are now double high on two mobile carts. Being as I mostly by for near term drinking now, they are the top layer of Weinboxes so I can just grab a bottle. Those demanding more bottle age are in the racks behind the carts. Buying agers is mostly over for me, so as I drink the cellar down, I can transfer all the wine to stacked and labeled Weinboxes and reclaim the racking for storage which is what it was before this obsession took hold.
It probably depends on how big your storage space is. Mine is 8’x10’ and so I partly rely on a few wine racks for bottles that I want to be accessible within the next several years. I have found these to be a great solution at around 75 cents per bottle (also sold on Amazon for slightly more).
I rarely buy full cases but do have a few OWCs in the cellar. Mostly I rely on Weinboxes (good for bottles I want to be less accessible than the wines on the racks, but not totally inaccessible) and stackable plastic containers for long-term storage (stuff I don’t want to touch for 8-10 years in most cases), which are considerably cheaper on a per-bottle basis than Weinboxes and can be stacked higher. My Weinboxes tend to bow out at the sides a bit and I don’t feel comfortable stacking them more than 5-6 high. I prefer stackable plastic containers to cardboard for greater stability and to eliminate any risks associated with the latter getting wet or losing structural integrity over the long term.
Resurrecting this thread a little. It seems like custom made tubes from tube manufacturers (I’m looking at spiralpaper.com in LA) are a better deal than Uline (and for heavier duty). It seems like Uline’s heaviest duty stuff is 0.125" thickness. I was considering 0.16" (based on another post I found) and 0.25" (because it’ll be 10-11 rows). Does anyone have any experience with any of these thicknesses with a stack that high and things working out well?
Edit: It’s a 15% locker capacity difference between 0.16" and 0.25" for my locker dimensions. 0.125" would just make them slightly less tightly packed vs 0.16", no change in nominal # of tubes. I’m also going to go for 3.5" diameter to handle most bottles.
Edit2: Shrug, I re-read some posts and figured I was being crazy. 0.125" is cheaper, gives me some more margin for fitting.
I’m also revamping my cellar to increase storage capacity. I’ve previously built my own racks (10 racks of 14 bottles each) but they aren’t very efficient. It was a project my dad and I started a few years ago. Now I’ve been bitten by the wine bug and need more space. I am strongly considering weinboxes for the short ends of my long and narrow cellar. 32 boxes would add up to 384 more bottles; as long as I can stack them 8 high which the website shows in a picture. It just fits the space well and seems very efficient. I’ll probably build about 7 more racks for the time being until the collect hits over 600 bottles.
Ethan, what kind of plastic containers do you use? I actually tried this a few days ago. Filled up a container store box that we keep Halloween decorations in with 26 bottles. It fits perfectly on my shelves but was too heavy to lift above my head. It weighed about 85 pounds. Smaller containers would obviously be easier to lift but lose a little efficiency. Also, do you leave the tops off? Temperature would not be a concern but no airflow/humidity control inside the box with the top on. Or am I thinking about that wrong? Thanks for the input.
No comment on tubes but seems like a neat idea. I also use CellarTracker, its a must have.
To be honest, I just went to my local Target and bought a bunch of boxes that hold around 19-20 bottles each. This is obviously heavier than a regular case but not so heavy that I can’t stack them. I drilled a couple of 1/2" holes in each plastic box with a cordless drill, to address the concerns you mention. I am hoping this will work – I’m not an engineer, and the experiment is less than a year old at this point, so time will tell.