Not since my first thermoelectric wine cooler have I had a storage malfunction, until this week. I remember a few years back when a friend on another wine board shared the story of shelving failure where multiple bottles were lost to breakage. Fast forward 4 years or so and I have an “Oh shit!” moment to share.
I was looking for a bottle of wine to drink Monday night and went out to my, new to me, active cellar. As I pulled a bottle from its slot in the rack I felt some resistence from the bottle above resting on it. As I slid the bottle out the bottle above fell down and started a chain reaction of 150 or more bottles slipping off the racking and resting on the ones below. Like dominos, clink, clink, clink, clink! All I could think was the whole thing was going to come crashing down. I closed the door, composed myself and went back into the house to medicate. I asked my wife if there had been an earthquake while I was away on the weekend and she shook her head no. I checked seismic activity online and that confirmed there was nothing of note close enough to us to be the culprit. I knew the bottles were all still in one piece so I left them be until I had time to figure out what went wrong.
Yesterday was the day. I was home early from work so I dove in. My racking is metal, 2 bottles deep with 4 individual racks spaced apart by wooden guides. Notches in the wood blocks separate the racks evenly front to rear. The bottles on the right hand side front racking had dropped in the rear half and had to be removed before I could investigate what went wrong. Removing the bottles was nerve wrenching. Moving one would cause another to shift. The last thing I wanted was for 600 bottles to fall to their untimely demise.
It was a slow tedious process but I accomplished it without losing my mind. Once I had the rack cleared I noticed that the two center situated racks were sitting lower than their front and rear counterparts. So much so that they had slipped out of the wooden blocks that hold them in place. The weight of the bottles and vibration of opening and closing the doors combined with adding and removing bottles allowed the racks to slowly shift rearward. Once one bottle got to the point where it wasn’t supported on one end it started the chain reaction and the entire rack shifted inward and the wines outward. I found that the lowest wood guide that the racks rest on was broken. Probably occured with the prior owner but I hadn’t noticed it. After some careful adjusting and lifting I was able to install some shims under the right side of the racking which I fashioned out of scrap redwood and raised the racks about 1/2" up and another 1" forward. Once it was all secured I was able to reload the wines and take a big deep breath of relief knowing this would not happen again.
It’s another example if how we can take some things for granted that they will just perform the way they were designed. I expect mechanical flaws to pop up from time to time but structural failures normally do not creep into my mind. Have you had one of those moments when you thought your investment might come crashing to the concrete floor?
