Forgive my ignorance if this has been posted before, but I had a hard time finding the proper search terms…
So I have always kept my Krug bottles in boxes at storage or on a single layer rack in a wine fridge. I am moving wines into a cellar and obviously the bottles don’t fit in any racking for 750s. My next thought was to put them into diamond bins but the way they are shaped, they tip forward. The same thing happens when I try to stack them on a flat shelf.
I just looked back at my photos from when I visited Krug and the way they stack bottles in their cellars involves wooden shims and some special metal racks for their pre-disgorgement bottles. The library wines seem to be stacked in just flat but I can’t see how they are arranged in this pic and I haven’t been able to make it work (see below). Anyone have a good solution that doesn’t involve taking up my precious few magnum rack slots?
A bin with a back wall will let the tipping be ok. Alternatively, if you were to construct a bin (perhaps from an empty wooden case) that is tilted at a 45 degree angle, you could have the bottles live in the shelf/bin in a permanently-tipped orientation with either cork down if you want them wetted or cork up if you believe the wetting isn’t important for the time horizon they’ll live in the bin. If you do the empty wine box option, you may have to lay the bottles in sideways if you don’t want them to stick out out past the case walls.
Sarah- Racks are built, so that ship has sailed unfortunately. I was expecting some issues with bigger bottles but figured I gave myself enough shelf space and diamond bins to stack others. Maybe I’ll try a backstop and see if that works to avoid the tipping issue.
And to compound it all, mags of Krug are even more of a problem because the diameter of the bottle is larger so the tipping forward is even more of an issue.
I was thinking about creating some sort of bar to place under the bottle necks and create a “pseudo-rack” to avoid the tilting/tipping. Just didn’t want to reinvent the wheel if someone already had a viable and simple solution to the problem.
In that case, I’d go the case/OWC route, as Brad says. You’ll still be able to get to them when you need them, I’m sure. Not worth the risk of something tipping.
We were crazy scrupulous about getting the racks the right size to hold what we have, including Krug mags and Riesling mags. I even had to post a thread a couple of weeks ago begging someone to measure a Krug magnum for me (ours are all in storage) before we finalized!
My Krug mags and some of the 750s are stored on the floor in the original cardboard case. I have yet to find a way to stack them on shelves so they are stable. However, looking at the pic you posted, it appears that they alternate neck in/neck out, though they also appear to have their own slots. I wonder if alternating orientation would be a stable configuration on flat shelving.
Some of mine are in the original cardboard cases and some are in magnum slots. My lone mag of 1996 Krug is simply standing up as if it is display bottle. Storing Krug is an enormous pain in the neck.
Fred - I think my row for Krug mags is 5" square. I can measure in the AM. We put in one row of extra large, along with the normal size magnum racks, specifically for Krug, Taitt CdC and Special Club mags. So far, all have fit, but they would definitely not have fit in the slots for normal mags.
Champagne bottles are always messing things up! I’ll stack a layer across the diamond bin with necks to the wall, and then a layer on top of that with necks outs. Old OWCs should be able to be repurposed too.
I use weinboxes for most of my aging champagne. Krug fits, but i need to prop up the neck with a piece of styrofoam. I have a a couple open top racks where I can fit bigger champagnes.