This is an excellent point, we struggled with the corner too, ended up coming to the same conclusion.
My only real concern is that your stairway is ‘up’ only. I would make it bidirectional. This should be a pretty low cost design change.
I echo Chris Kravitz’ idea of double deep on the bottom and single on top. This also gives you a long working shelf for when you do an inventory or reorg, or just for lining up your new arrivals as you decide where to rack them. It will be tight getting to the back bottles near the floor, but you’ll only be using them as your cellar reaches capacity, or for wines you want to age a long time.
Kyle,
You mention the goal to maximize storage space. You’ve gotten great advice so far.
I’d consider a corner rack (of perhaps single bottle slots) to avoid losing the corner space or at least run your back wall racks all the way into the corner and move your side-wall racks to account for that.
We all love the idea of of a display row, but it’s very inefficient as others have mentioned.
In my experience, single bottle slots are the least efficient use of storage space. If I recall my calculations correctly, diamond bins hold 2x what single slot racks will given the same wall space. Single slots have their uses, and I like them, but to make an entire cellar of them might be a mistake if you’re attempting to maximize bottle storage.
Questions:
How many bottles do you currently have?
How many bottles will this cellar design hold? You should know this. It’s a much different proposition for a 60 year old to build a wine cellar vs. a 30/40 yro. A 60yro might not need much room to grow and can adequately project future purchases based on their past habits. A 30/40 yro coming into prime earning years, needs plenty of room to expand if they’re passionate about wine.
Do you have any wine in wooden cases? Are you on any winery mailing list where you would receive a 3 or 6-pack in a wooden case? If you are, or anticipate this, you need more space for this style of cases.
Do you plan to store Pinot Noir or Burgundy? These bottles have slightly larger diameters vs cab bottles. If these are part of your collection, you’ll want to verify they fit in your single bottle slots.
I’ve built 2 cellars for myself and in the second cellar I incorporated the following based on my habits and experiences with the first- I used less single bottle slots and more diamond bins to increase #of bottles per sqft of wall space. I put in more rectangular bin racking or baker-style shelving that would hold 3 & 6 bottle wooden cases, including space for these on top of the wall racks at ceiling height.
Best of luck!
Consider adding cork flooring. Not wine bottle corks, but cork planks. It’s soft and once you drop a bottle, you’ll be glad you had it. I had zebra cork flooring installed in my cellar. It’s functional, feels nice to stand on, has a bit of give if you drop a bottle, helps absorb sound and looks great.
When I had a cellar in my old house, I used something called Puzzlemats, something like this, but they were higher quality and denser:
They are easy to cut and install, and you can drop a bottle from shoulder height and it won’t break. Not fancy, but they work great.
For this you can buy a creeper and roll right over to the bottles and reach in (17" wide)
(While aesthetically I like this idea it’s going to be a real PITA to get bottles out from the rear rack in that corner - just try bending over and reaching your right arm out parallel to the floor to pull a bottle from the rear rack. Then try your left hand. You can get some of the wall racks for the wall to the left of door (concept - https://www.wineracks.com/metal-wine-racks/vintageview/wall-wine-rack-series.html?p=2)