Starting at the door’s left, the “columns” (even though they appear slightly staggered) are:
to the immediate left, “a”, on the left wall, “b,c,d,e”, on the facing wall, “f,g,h”, and on the wall to the right, “j,k”. There is an additional tier of shelves attached to the right of the door, “m”.
The “rows” are simply “1-8”, bottom to top, and “0” for bottles on the floor.
So, for example, in the first picture the bins run from “f1” (lower left) to “h7” (upper right (actually, there are now some on the floor to the left (“f0”))), and on top of the seventh row (“f8”). This is how I record them in CT, there are no labels, it is just in my head as I view the racks.
Generally wines are stored randomly as there is space available and as it fits the bottles. Since the average bin holds about 16 bottles in a stack 4 high, to retrieve any particular one I have to move either 0 bottles (top row of stack), 1 bottle (second row), 4 bottles (3rd row), or 8 bottles (bottom row), so an average of just over 3 bottles, actually less since there are lots of instances of multiples in any single bin.
Continuing on from my post above: So eventually I ran out of storage space even in my long hallway because I refuse to stack the boxes more than two high for safety reasons. The safety of the wine, that is, not myself. I’m afraid that if a bottle were to accidentally fall to the floor from 3 stacks high it would break.
So the only option was to either stop buying wine (said no Wine Berserker member ever) or come up with some alternatives. There was always that closet but I was never thrilled with it because it was warm and there was no air circulating through it unlike in the open hallway. And this is where a little ingenuity and a fortunate visit to the SAQ came in.
The year that I started using the hallway for my storage, I was at the SAQ Beaubien store in Montreal buying wine during my regular Xmas to my family. I asked them about a wine I was looking for that their website said was in the store but I couldn’t find on their wine rack shelves.
The SAQ stores have a mix of wine fridges and steel shelves in the middle of their stores but line the actual walls with some very nice high quality wooden rack shelving. Without hesitation, the CSR reaches down to the bottom of the wooden rack and opens a drawer at the bottom! I’d never seen that before and had he not done it, I never would have even known that all the stores had these drawers. So naturally taken aback, I asked him if that was a good way to store the wine and he told me that he actually likes the drawers better than the racks in some cases.
If it’s good enough for a professional store then it’s good enough for me. So the next thing I did was purchase a new mobile microwave stand/kitchen drawer set. You know, the kind you put your microwave on and then throw in all the kitchen utensils into. Except in my case, I put in all my cork topped half bottles of sweet and fortified wines instead:
Now I don’t honestly think you’d get away with this using full-sized bottles. In fact, I couldn’t even get away with it using standard icewine bottles which are unusually shaped in that they are as long as regular wine bottles but quite a bit narrower. So this required some further improvisation.
What you see here is a large floor to ceiling length kitchen storage closet. Not one built into the house itself like a regular wardrobe closet, but a separate self contained unit. What I did here was measure the length of the icewine bottles and then went and bought some interlocking wire baskets. If they look familiar to you, it’s because they’re the kind of baskets you’d find in a standard chest freezer as an extra. Note that I also put my Austrian TBAs and French fortified wines in there as well due to the similar shaped bottles.
The shelf above has no wire baskets but is instead used to stand any screwcapped sweet wine half-bottles, T-stopper capped sherry bottles and spirits. I prefer to store all of these upright as opposed to on their side. While I have had no issue with screwcaps, I have on occasion found fortified wine leaking out of the top of their bottles slightly through the T-stopper so I no longer store them on their side.
But what about the temperature? I did mention in the first post, after all, that there’s a discreet heater and blower constantly on in the kitchen. Well you can see my fridge thermometer in the last picture and the fact that the microwave drawers are actually all the way in the corner in the picture above. The tall cabinet is right next to it. Somehow, someway, the temperature in both the tall closet and the drawers also stays perfect despite the heater being there. There is a bit of a draft there sometimes that helps but I can’t imagine that it alone is enough to maintain the temperature, though I could be wrong about that. Without having any structural engineering knowledge, I can only assume that both the heavier material of the cabinets and drawers plus being located in the corner of the house along with the little draft is helping to hold the wine at the right temperature.
Steve: I really like the simplicity and efficiency of your setup. Proving again my point you don’t need to be rich to do this. Did you design and build the racks yourself?
I did indeed construct the racks myself, I have a cordless screwdriver and circular saw, and used drywall screws because they are skinny and long, but with coarse threads, they are really tight when screwed all the way in.
Since I was putting this together myself and had to get everything through a normal closet door, the rack for each wall is just 7 identical shelves (with the “back” attached alternately so that the dividers would be staggered, and screws could then be driven in from the top as each shelf was placed). So, I in fact only had to “design” one shelf for each wall, and really they are all the same design, just different lengths and bin counts. I hope this makes sense!
Lumber purchased at Home Depot, I have about US$450 invested, all in, including the battery tools.
Thanks, Chris - I built the bins myself, pretty easy using a few forms. The risers are one piece floor-to ceiling so they can’t fall away from the wall. (Credit to Richard Gold’s “How and Why to Build a Wine Cellar” book for that trick.) The horizontal pieces are connected to the risers by wooden pegs that pass through the risers, so no hardware shows anywhere. It was fun in a repetitive motion, hope I don’t lose a finger sort of way.
Sorry to revive such an old thread, but I’m currently considering racking for my new cellar, and the leading contender right now are bins like the ones that Richard Gold described in his book and like the ones that @Tom_Wheltle built.
Tom, now that you’ve used these bins for a few years, what do you think? Anything you’d change? Do you like the 13.5”x9” “universal” bin size that Gold recommends, or would you go larger/smaller? How are the wooden pegs working out as shelf supports? Any problems with bottles sliding out of the bins?
Sorry for the flood of questions, but if you’re still around, I’d love to learn from your experience. (And if anyone else has experience with this type of bins, feel free to share your experience too.)
Built this all myself including the racks. Racks are double deep and very optimized for typical bordeaux bottles. Have only about 1/4 space around the bottle for maximum packing. Other wall will have larger slots to fit some of the larger 750 bottles. Will have space for about 900 or so once done. Racks are cherry wood.
HI Charles! Sorry about the slow reply - I’m not here that often and just getting used to the new format.
I built the cellar around 1990 so yes, I have some experience using them (although we moved away 5 years ago.)
I made the width of each bin match the width of four bottles to hold the resulting stack more securely. You can’t see it from that angle but I also every other vertical 12.25" x 9" (to hold 4 Bordeaux-style bottles securely on the bottom, then 3, then 4 on top) and every other other vertical 13" x 9" (to hold 11 Burg-style bottles in the same 11 bottle capacity configuration.) The final shelves at the far end were simply cut to a width to fill the remaining space - I think they worked out to a bit over 15 inches.
Over time, I wished I’d made them a hair wider as bottle got bigger and bigger and bigger.
I also angled the shelves 1/2" lower in the rear than the front to keep the bottles more stable, sliding towards the back (and also very slightly helping to collect sediment at the bottom of the bottle.)
I did need hardware for the final shelves due to the exact fit, using shelf holders like these:
pushed into the holes drilled for the wooden dowels.
I thought the design was pretty effective - space efficient, stable, and I didn’t have to move tooo many bottles to get to the one I wanted,
Another note - I had floor to ceiling double deep racks on another side of the old cellar. I always hated laying on the floor to get to the rear bottles near the bottom.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I’m pretty sure I’m going to build this same style of bin, I’m glad that to get your experience. Now I just need to decide how much to tilt the bins!
I keep my “nicer” more expensive wines in a wine fridge, but built this shelving under the stairs for the “every day” bottles. That rack on the left is made of cedar and old railroad ties. I made the bigger, more standard appearing rack out of left over pine boards from when our barn was built.
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