What a great cellar! Thanks for posting this @Stephen_Williams
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Lovely.
How are the Bordex racks running down the centre of number 2 affixed??
The centre tracks are all joined together. There are also two pylons that are set into the floor that give extra rigidity. Given the weight of the racks however nothing moves.
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Pro tip: Perform an extensive inventory BEFORE you build it.
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Funny how you have this plan set in your mind when you start and when the day is over you wonder where all the time went.
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Yup. This has been a fun project, but every step has taken longer than expected.
What a wonderful cellar! I’m in the process of building a much more modest cellar, and right now I’m trying to make some decisions about racking. So I couldn’t help but notice the bins that run along the back wall of your top photo.
Alternating bottles between punt out and capsule out (as you do in those bins) appears to result in a much denser packing of bottles that might serve me well in my small cellar where space is at a premium.
How do you like the alternating bottles arrangement that those bins use? Do you happen to know the dimensions of a bin (length x width x height)?
I went with individual bottle racking. Much as I like the idea of stacking bottles compactly like that, I live in earthquake land and I can imagine all of those bottle cascading out and shattering against each other.
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Luckily, I live in Indiana where earthquakes aren’t quite as big a concern. Unless the New Madrid fault ever breaks loose again. But when that happens, I’m going to have bigger problems than broken wine bottles to worry about!
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Pictures of my passive upper midwest cellar in progress. The first picture was my 2021 project. Second two are just functional installs of phase 2 started here in 2023. Trimming out and lighting still need doing. Room stays 58-62 year-round, I do need to run the humidifier in winter but overall, very low maintenance operation.
Phase 3 will be something in the center for additional storage, but it can wait till 2024.
Things won’t match perfectly because I really had not plan at the beginning, it’s evolving along with me and more functional than pretty but I can make it a little pretty as I enjoy the wood work.
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Nothing Fancy. Very functional. Full walk around. ~2300 Bottles capacity
Underground in Utah. Passive Cellar. Low of 45f during dead of winter and high 63f in the peak of summer.
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Lack of Winter humidity doesn’t seem to be an issue for me. My passive cellar is sitting around 48° 84%. Summertime around 58-60° 65%.
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I’m not in France at the moment but will ask my house keeper to go and measure the bins. They were originally conceived such that the bottles would all be ‘neck-out’ but as always happens (with me at least), I needed more space and hence flipped to ‘out-in’. The bins in France are only one bottle deep. In my cellar in Malaysia I designed much bigger double depth bins for long term/ bulk storage. These can hold up to 72 bottles/ bin depending upon bottle size/girth. The bins pictured below are 39x39x75cm.
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Thanks. That would be very much appreciated. In my small space, double depth bins would maximize the capacity in the limited space, but my wife thinks that it would eat into the floor space too much and make the space claustrophobic. I showed her your bins and she liked them, so they be a good compromise for us.
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What humidifier is that?
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Stephen Williams
Thank you so much. That’s really going above and beyond the call of duty. Now I guess I have some calculations to do!
17L/4.5Gal Ultra Large… Amazon.com
Amazon, 4.5 gallon, lasts a solid 7 days in the driest part of winter here.
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Many thanks!
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