Vintage Cellars was delighted to be featured in Wine Spectator’s November 30th issue (on sale now). The article featured Vintage Cellars wine cellar projects in Escondido and San Diego, one of which is pictured above in high resolution. More from the article (click for larger images):

More about the Gilliland wine cellar, including additional images.




You can pick up a copy at your favorite newsstand or wine shop to read more about these and other featured wine cellars. The article was split into sections on small, medium and large wine cellars, so it is worth a read for collectors of any scale.
For more photos of custom wine cellars, flip through the slideshows on our custom wine cellar design page. Thinking of building your own? We offer free design consultations and can work with you from sketches to finishing touches.

If you have a growing wine collection, there’s one thing you can’t do without: a system for keeping track of your bottles.  Ok, you need a proper storage space and a climate-controlled environment too, but once you have those things, organization really is essential.  If you don’t know what’s in your cellar, your collection can quickly turn into chaos.

Keeping track of the bottles you buy and drink is the only way you can ensure that your collection grows the way you want it to.  But if you’re like me, your average organizational techniques consist of scribbled post-it notes and lists that you are continually losing.  Your wine collection deserves better.

Disorganized wine enthusiasts, meet eSommelier, “The World’s Finest Wine Cellar Management System”.  It uses a touch screen system to track the bottles you have in your cellar, giving you an easy, elegant way to keep in touch with your wine.

Here are a few of its coolest features:
• It shows you the price you paid for the wine and compares that to its current value.  
• It uses a simple color-coded system to show you how close any given wine is to optimal drinking age.
• It includes a bar code printed that makes a unique label for each wine you bring into the cellar, giving each bottle a unique address and identity that lets you know where it is at any time.  
• You can access your eSommelier database from your kitchen or even from the wine store, letting you know at the touch of a button which bottles you already have, and which will be the perfect additions to your collection.

It’s definitely pricey, but there’s no comparing this system to a pen-and-paper log or excel spreadsheet. eSommelier is truly the ultimate wine management system.

1. These Diamond Cube wine racks.  You can stack them to fit your space perfectly, and the shape is so unique and cool.

2.  This Vinotheque Wine Credenza.  It’s a beautiful place to display your family photos, it’s a buffet table, and it’s top-of-the-line, climate-controlled wine cabinet.

3.  This 6-bottle Monterey WineKeeper system.  Ok, so you’d probably have to be a restaurant owner to need this model, but that doesn’t mean you can’t dream, right?  This system would mean that you could open multiple bottles at once for a tasting, and then keep them fresh for weeks. And we have the more reasonably-sized ones, too, if you just can’t see giving up your microwave for this baby.

4.  This VintageView Floor-to-Ceiling Wine Rack.  There’s something to be said for the modern touches in wine cellars, and it’s pretty cool to be able to display all your bottle labels.

5.  This Eurocave Performance 3-Temperature Wine Cabinet.  The king of all wine cabinets. Three temperature zones. No bottle need ever be improperly chilled again.

1. If the conditions aren’t right, the wine will rot.  There’s nothing worse than opening a bottle after years of storage, only to discover that instead of aging gracefully, it’s turned to vinegar.  Keep the temperature of your wine cellar, wine refrigerator, wine closet, or wine cabinet between 50 and 65 degrees F for red wine and 45 to 60 degrees for white wine.

2. Here’s a nifty trick: since heat rises, and white wines need cooler conditions than reds do, keep white wines close to the floor and red wines closer to the ceiling.

3. Maintain a relative humidity between 50 and 70%.  Click here for our discussion on the importance of the right humidity for wine aging.

4. Keep bottles out of the light as much as possible.  When you do need to flip the switch to read the labels, make sure you’re using incandescent, not florescent—the extra UV light from florescent bulbs can penetrate the glass and interfere with the wine’s aging process.

5. Store bottles on their sides to keep the cork moist (a too-dry cork can shrink or even crack, letting in too much air and ruining the wine).

6. Use racks specifically designed for wine storage.  Certain types of woods and treatments can impart undesirable tastes to the bottles or can not rot in the damp, cool climate of your wine cellar.

7. Since you want to protect your wines from temperature fluctuations, and the areas nearest the door of your wine cellar are most vulnerable to temperature and humidity shifts, keep the younger wines that you plan to drink soon near the door, and the investment bottles that you want to age in the back corners.

8. Protect your wines from vibration.  Put your wine cellar in an appropriate place (a professional can help you find one), and avoid picking up the bottles.  Hang wine tags on the necks of your stored sideways bottles and write the label information on them.  This way, you can browse through your collection without disturbing the bottles.

9. The best way to ensure your collection is organized is to keep a regularly updated database of what’s currently in your cellar.  You can use a book or even a computer spreadsheet.  There is also some nifty software built for managing wine collections. Your records should note when you bought the wine, its name, region, producer, vineyard name, price paid, estimated value and future value, and leave space for tasting notes—the most important part!—for when you finally drink it.

As we’ve previously discussed here on the blog, green is in! More than ever, people are looking for environmentally friendly alternatives to the products they use in their daily lives. Using sustainable wood products is an important part of this effort. The forests of our planet are our oxygen factories, and we can’t live without them. Dwindling forests make for poor air quality, leave land open to being washed away by rainfall, and reduce the habitats of animals and humans.

Not using wood is an option, and if you want to go that route with your wine racks we have great metal wine racks available, including sideways racks that will display your wine labels. But many people strongly prefer the traditional look of wood, and for some applications there’s no good substitute. So what is the environmentally conscious person to do?

In recent years, several non-profit agencies have formed to certify the sustainability of wood suppliers. Their goal is to ensure that forests will continue to supply our needs for wood products, oxygen, animal habitats, etc for the present and future. Various agencies have different standards for certification, but they all share the goal of keeping our natural resources sustainably available. You can make a statement to forestry companies and make a commitment to the environment by purchasing wood products that come from sustainable-certified forests.
Here at Vintage Cellars, most of our wood wine racks are made from materials that are certified by either SFI or FSC, two major agencies that certify forests as sustainable. Click here for a comparison of these two agencies (PDF). Most of our Vintner wine racks, Designer wine racks and Redwood wine racks as well as our commercial wine racks are made from wood that is certified by one of these agencies.
More information on sustainable forestry is available on SFI’s site or you can get the Wikipedia overview here.

We know that wine has to be kept at a low temperature in order to age well.  It’s logical—we keep our perishable items cool so that they don’t spoil as quickly, and wine is, of course, a perishable item.  But what’s with the humidity thing?  Does wine really need to be kept at a certain level of humidity in order to keep from spoiling and aid aging?  Or is that just a useless feature that wine cellar makers have convinced us we need?  Bottom line: what does a wine refrigerator have that a regular refrigerator doesn’t?

The reason we need a humid environment in which to store wine mostly has to do with the cork.  So let’s talk about cork and it’s role in wine storage:  Cork comes from cork trees, which are mostly grown in Europe, and so is an organic substance.  (Incidentally, cork growing is a completely sustainable type of farming, since the tree is not killed to harvest the cork, and cork forests across the world protect many rare species of plants and animals, not to mention the cork farmers that rely on the trees for their livelihood.  If you want to read our argument in support of keeping corks natural, click here.)

Cork is the ideal material for sealing wine bottles, because it can expand and contract as its environment changes.  This is particularly useful for wine, because the glass bottles wine is kept in change their shape with the weather—cooler temperature cause the silicon dioxide molecules that make up glass to squeeze closer together, shrinking the bottle.  Warmer conditions cause them to spread out, expanding the bottle.  Although you want to protect your wine from temperature fluctuations, it is naturally and unavoidably exposed to a variety of environments (when it’s being bottled, when it’s being shipped, and when you’re taking it home from the store, for example).  The plastic nature of cork means that it expands and contracts with the glass, maintaining a tight seal between your wine and the outside world.

So, corks are very important for maintaining stable conditions inside your wine bottle.  And humidity is essential to maintaining the integrity of a cork.  Too dry, and the cork shrinks, letting in too much oxygen and causing cork taint (when a cork is so dry it cracks when you pull it out, the wine is almost certain to be ruined).  Too wet, and mold can form on the corks—it can rot them out and taint your wine.  (However, a little mold on the outside of a very old bottle’s cork is perfectly normal, as long as the mold is only on the dry side.)

The ideal humidity level at which to store wine is 50%-70% relative humidity.  The best kind of humidifiers are generally separate from the cooling systems, although if you live in a humid area or have a certain type of cooling system, you might be ok.  Through-the-wall humidifiers are the most heavy-duty choice.

Another very cool option is a fountain humidifier.  These work by circulating water through a fountain, allowing it to evaporate into the air and humidify the environment.  These wine cellar humidifier fountains can be a unique and aesthetically pleasing part of a wine cellar, and they are sure a conversation starter—no one expects to see a fountain among the dusty bottles.  Fountain humidifiers, however, don’t provide as much humidifying power as through-the-wall humidifiers, so if you live in the desert, one might not be an option.

You can learn more about humidifying a wine cellar and types of humidifiers here in our Education Center.

The humidity factor is what differentiates a wine cellar from a refrigerator.  The right humidity is crucial to the success of your wine aging endeavors.  Humidity needs change from area to area, and humidifiers require that your wine cellar is properly insulated and sealed to work properly, so make sure you contact a wine cellar professional about your specific humidification needs.

Sometimes, even the best-chosen words fall short.  When you’re talking about some of the incredible wine cellars that Vintage Cellars has designed in the past, the pictures really are worth a thousand words.  Today, rather than waxing philosophical about wine tasting or discussing at length the benefits of wines from a particular climate, let’s take a pictorial tour of some of Vintage Cellars’ past projects.

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.

A Wine Cellar on a Yacht:

In late 2008, Vintage Cellars was contacted about building a wine cellar on a 124-foot motor yacht. After several meetings with the captain & the owner, we decided to take out an existing steam shower (just outside of the rec room) and create a temperature controlled wine room.

After the contract was awarded, there were still many issues and obstacles to over come:

• What is behind the steam shower?
• How are we going to insulate, vapor barrier and prepare the room properly (since the soon to be wine cellar was on the lowest deck down a narrow spiral staircase)?
• How are the bottles going to remain stable in a wine cellar on a yacht that encounters rough seas?
• Where do we get cooling equipment for a yacht with European power specs now in dry dock in San Diego?
• How do we maximize the bottle capacity while keeping safety and the highest quality standards in mind?

The Vintage Cellars design team, wine cabinet maker and carpentry team spent the next several weeks developing a design and a plan. Due to the tight space and location on the yacht, we decided to prefabricate an interior shell in our shop. Each wall would be built out of marine grade plywood with each section vapor barriered and insulated properly. Basically, we created a modular wall, floor and ceiling to seal the room. From there, we could line the room with cherry wood to keep the high quality finish consistent with the rest of the yacht.

Cooling… well there was another mountain that we had to climb. With over 20 years experience, Vintage Cellars has developed relationships with companies all over the world. These relationships were crucial for us to secure a ceiling mounted evaporator coil and compressor with enough BTUs to cool the room properly. It took several long discussions with the yacht engineer to create a mounting bracket in the bilge to support the compressor. We finally had the proper cooling for a complete wine cellar.

As the design continued, we tested and retested ways to secure the bottles in high seas. Based on that testing, we decided building individual storage on a 5 degree cant with a horizontal spacer bar at every space. We don’t ever want to test this in action, but we believe the yacht would have to flip on its side for that wine to come out. To maximize the space, and create show storage for large champagne, we developed a horizontal display cabinet on the same 5 degree cant with a face frame to hold the bottle in place. Its amazing what you can come up with when you put your mind to it. Each piece of racking was built in high grade cherry wood with a clear lacquer finish, all to maintain the same look on the yacht.

The carpentry team had to create the look, the pizazz of the cellar. Notice the sky light on the left hand side and the glass door. Each piece was custom built with dual pane thermal insulated glass. The hardware was secured from a marine hardware company specifically to match the rest of the cellar.

All in all, this wine cellar on a yacht was a fabulous success.

Check out a video of this transformation here:

I have two examples I want to share with everyone currently planning a wine cellar.  Whether new construction, a remodel or an addition to the home, it is important to review all aspects of construction with a wine cellar specialist.  These two examples both have to do with heat load and wine cellar windows.

 The first example is from a wine cellar on the coast in Southern California.  A general contractor was responsible for the cooling, construction and preparation of the wine cellar.  I consulted with the interior decorator and the home owner on a racking design.  The concept was beautiful with stone, artistic tile and an amazing floor.  The wine cellar windows were tinted glass. The racking was hand made cabinetry, distressed, stained and waxed to create an antique effect. 

 I recently received an emergency phone call from the client to discuss condensation building up on the outside of the cellar on the 2 large tinted glass windows.  After a brief conversation, I discovered the wine cellar window glass was a single pane glass.  55 degrees inside a wine cellar and 80 degree moist ocean air will create condensation, guaranteed. 

 The second example is from a dry desert climate.  There were many factors that had to be considered to meet the clients design requirements.  Part of that was a near invisible cooling unit.  In this example, the cooling unit was working 23 hours a day and only keeping the cellar at 59 degrees.  The wine cellar was constructed with the front wall done entirely in ½ inch thick glass.   There was not enough BTU’s in the cooling system to compensate for the heat load coming through the glass.

 In both situations, the glass was the key problem ingredient.  Vintage Cellars recommends using a dual pane thermal insulated glass for any wine cellar windows or doors.  The exterior environment can have a dramatic effect when the goal is to keep a room at 55 degrees.  Consult with a wine cellar expert before making decisions that can affect your favorite room.