Designer Series 6 Column Half Height Rack

If you and your significant other have talked about creating your own wine cellar, why wait?  Though Vintage Cellars’ wine racks are designed by experts, they can be assembled by novices in little time.  This means, with any of the Vintage Cellars wine racking kits, you’re destined for success!  Racks are designed to last a lifetime, and you can select just the right colors to match your decor. Don’t be afraid to get creative! Why, there’s no reason why you couldn’t create a wine labyrinth if you so chose!

Designer Series Double Waterfall Wine Rack

Wine areas need not be stagnant spaces, either; you can mix and match styles of design to give a single room different atmospheres in different sections.  For instance, a formal wall containing Winemaker 2 Column Open Diamond Cubes can be contrasted by an opposing lighter, playful wall featuring black metal lattice wine racks.  An elegant diamond bin wine rack below a classic archway can be countered by a section of modern wine racking units, like the VintageView 3′ wine racks, and so on.  You can even use different designs to house different wines: dark, rustic ones for reds, and lighter ones for whites!  With so many types of wine racks to choose from, you’re limited only by your imagination.

If the above projects seem too ambitious, here’s an easy-yet-creative idea that is sure to attract attention: spell out a marriage proposal, or make an announcement with wine bottles.  If the bottles are racked, you can easily spell words and messages by placing red wines, strategically, amidst a “neutral” backdrop of whites.  You can even create simple images, similar to popular ASCII art we sometimes see on our friends’ Facebook posts.  Because this takes a little time and planning, your message will be all the more memorable (However, if your partner is one of the many wine lovers who organizes their collection obsessively, think twice before moving their collection around. And keep in mind that unnecessary movement isn’t a great thing for stored bottles–this plan might be best executed with some of the less-collectible bottles in the cellar!).

Have fun getting those creative juices flowing!

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!

Though the common temperature range for storing red wine has been between 50ºF and 55ºF, with whites stored as low as 45ºF, wine cellar expert David Spon (and Vintage Cellars!) recommends keeping a cellar at  55ºF, and at 60% to 75% humidity.  If the air is too humid, mold can grow and even damage your cellar’s wood.  If too dry, corks can crack.  David also notes that some people keep their cellars a little bit warmer if they store mostly young wines, and slightly cooler if their collections consist of older ones (since wines age more slowly in colder temperatures.)

If you don’t want to see your wine collection ruined, it’s a good idea to invest in a decent wine cellar or specially-crafted wine storage cabinet.  Stylish wine cellars can be built easily and affordably using designer wine racks or traditional redwood wine racks. Wine storage cabinets, like regal wine credenzas, also offer affordable (and classy) options.  Remember to store wine horizontally to keep the cork moist, and never freeze a bottle of wine!  When stored properly, and at the ideal temperature, your wine collection will age gracefully and provide anticipated delight.

Want to learn more about the correct storage conditions for your wine? Head over to the Wine Storage Education Center to read more about temperature, humidity, cooling systems and more. We’ve even done separate articles on the right storage conditions for red wine, white wine and sparkling wine/Champagne.

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.

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.

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.

A wall fountain is one way of adding humidity to a wine cellar.

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.

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