Have you always dreamed of having your own wine cellar? Or, if you’re new to collecting, is your cabinet filling up faster than you expected? It might be time to look into building a custom wine cellar—and Vintage Cellars is the exact right place to come.

Use the new Custom Cellar Design Request form, easily accessible from our Custom Wine Cellar Design page, to tell us all about your dream wine cellar. You’ll need to have an idea about the size of your collection, your desired cooling system, and your budget, as well as the intended location of your wine cellar. Once we have all of your information, we will contact you about your cellar design. We will do our best to meet your budget needs and timeline by incorporating our racking kit styles into your design.

Just look for this button (or just click this one!):

And get ready to discuss the luxury custom wine cellar you’ve been wishing for!

Vintage Cellars can design a custom solution that will hold your cases (or large bottles, or split bottles, or whatever you have) beautifully and efficiently. Or, if you’re looking for a ready-made racking system, you may want to select one like this case and bottle rack that can hold a mix of bottle sizes and cases.

The Gilliland wine cellar in San Diego, built in 2009, was designed to be the focal point of the dining room. This is a small wine cellar, holding only 750 bottles or so, but it has a lot of personality. To create the space for the wine cellar, a bump-out was added to the wall. You can see the framing for this addition below:

The framing for the bump-out to to create space for the Gilliland wine cellar.

The Gilliland cellar was outfitted with wine racks and display shelving, including a display area on the left side that isn’t shown in Wine Spectator:

There is also adjustable shelving for large-format bottles in the center of the room (you can also see a Rogar Estate bottle opener in the foreground; there is a 10% off coupon for these openers available on the Vintage Cellars Facebook, Twitter and email newsletter right now!):

The cellar is outfitted with insulated glass doors framed by a stone facade and opens into the dining room.

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Small wine cellars can pack a surprising amount of wine and interesting features into a minimal space. This cellar, designed to enhance the owner’s enjoyment of their collection rather than to store investment wines, is a perfect example of how a small wine cellar can be a big enhancement to a home.

Ready to think about your own custom wine cellar project? Check out more Vintage Cellars custom wine cellars and call us for a free quote and design assistance.

I love the interesting shapes of the shelving in this wine cellar.  The curves and angles make the room so much more than racks of bottles.  And the tracked lighting does a great job of highlighting different parts of the room, showcasing the myriad different lines and textures hidden in a wine room.

I think that the cabinet really makes this wine room: its the delicate yet rustic design breaks up the racking, and the placement gives the eye a focal point, setting off, rather than distracting from, the wine around it.  And I love the display racks here, that store bottles vertically with the topmost bottle angled up, giving the wine connoisseur the ability to easily see what’s in each column.

The simple, almost Asian-style racking in this room gives it a clean, modern feel.  But my favorite detail of this room is the strong, minimalist ceiling archway.  It breaks the room up and makes it visually interesting, something that is really challenging to do in this kind of space, which, if you think about it, is really just a storage place for hundreds of bottles.

Wow.  This room is just magnificent.  There’s a lot of you could say about it, but I’ll limit myself to my three favorite things: 1. The small tasting table worked into the wall creates an intimate space in this gigantic wine room.  2. The stair-style shelving in the middle makes the wine seem to be spilling into the room from the ceiling–it just says opulence and luxury to me.  3. The special place for wooden wine crates.  They add a warm, textural feel to the room.

I love the display of decanters in this one.  They add such flowy, artistic shapes to a room of angles.

These Spanish-style doors are just gorgeous.  And how cool is it to have glass doors leading into your wine cellar? To be sure, the Vintage Cellars team has to work hard to ensure that these delicate glass and wrought iron doors seal just as effectively as heavy glass ones, but isn’t the beauty worth the effort?

This is a perfect example of a small space used well.  The different dimensions created by the shelving really make it visually interesting: it’s a corner rich with wines from around the world, which have traveled from hand to hand and place to place to come together here.

Curves are always a great addition to a wine cellar, because they help break up the visual monotony of racks upon racks.  But this sweeping staircase goes far beyond.  It truly gives the room a dramatic, elegant flair.  And small details like the wicker-covered wine jug in the foreground really add a personal touch.  These are stairs you could linger on, pondering your wine selection, for hours.

This was a totally unique custom wine cellar project. There are curved display features, 3 rows of high reveal display, coved shelves, pull out storage, wine glass display and even a mirrored solid archway. The custom handmade wine cabinetry in this cellar really highlights the display of wine.

Check out page 30 in the October 31st issue of the Wine Spectator (“A Chef’s Education) to see the feature on Jeff Strauss’ custom wine cellar and the Vintage Cellars photographs.

jake

The Stan Story

Stan’s basement was a room fit for lawn equipment, a ladder and boxes filled with holiday decorations, but hardly a place to properly cellar over 2500 bottles of wine.  Wine is a delicate matter here at Vintage Cellars and cellaring wine at an improper temperature in an uncontrolled environment just doesn’t sit well on our palates. 

 When Stan and I first met, we had to immediately attack some issues:  time and wine!  He was moving in soon and had to transfer his collection.  We needed to work fast but we needed to think about both the present and the future.  We needed to build out, properly vapor barrier, insulate and cool the wine cellar.  Elevate the racks and create a raised wood floor in case the basement area ever retained water.  We needed a custom wine cellar design that could handle a collection of Bordeaux, Barolos, California Cabs, Oregon Pinots, 750’s, magnums, double magnums, cases and growing/changing every year.  There were plumbing pipes that needed access, a rear door entering a crawl space and electrical lines everywhere.  After several revisions and conversations, the former basement was Stan’s (and his wine’s) new favorite room.

 “Vintage Cellars did this project on time and within my budget.  It’s now my favorite room in the house”.  S.G.

 You’ve finally bought that house of your dreams and that 200 bottle Eurocave just can’t satisfy your desire to grow that wine collection.  Where are you going to build your personal wine cellar?  What about the 7 ft by 30 inch deep nook in your dining room?  Sure, we must consider how to cool the environment and prepare the room properly, but let’s assume it will work out.  It’s time to consider the décor of the home, how many bottles to store, the amount of space available and how to easily access the wine.  These factors are all tools to help determine what type of racking to use. 

 Wine consumption and collection has increased exponentially over the past 10 years.  To meet the market demands and the American consumer demands for quality and choice, the wine racking market has been exploding with new and exciting products.  Classic redwood wine racks, old world terra cotta clay wine tiles, new “green” recycled wine barrel racks and modern metal Vintage View racks are just the tip of the iceberg. 

 In this particular case, the home was modern/contemporary and the desired cellar capacity was about 400 bottles.  I couldn’t think of a better idea than to use Vintage View racking.  Using a small nook in the dining room (that also has a small window area into the kitchen), we developed a plan using sliding glass doors for access, floor to ceiling mounts and Vintage View racking.  The end result was a 432 bottle capacity wine cellar with a gallery wall of wine label artwork viewable from the dinning room table.  Outside of the beautiful results, this project met another important consideration: budget.  In this design, the wine racks and the installation came in under $3,000 (this does not include doors, room preparation or the wine cooling system).   Now there is money left over to help fill the space with wine bottles.