Wine Cellar Ideas Wanted

[SteveS07]

Hi everyone,

I'm starting the idea gathering stage of building a wine cellar. Being on a very tight budget, I'll be utilizing existing material I have, i.e., no money for redwood to build the shelving, but I do have a variety of other woods mainly pine to build with.

The space I have to work with is 64"Dx48"Wx84"T. This is an old fruit cellar. The cool thing about this space is 2 of the walls are foundation walls, old thick limestone quarried block from the late 1800's. Which also benefits in that the temperature stays pretty constant and has a nice aesthetic look.

I'd love to hear from others who have created wine cellars in small spaces or from anyone with ideas on maximizing the available space.

Thanks!
Steve

 

[ibglowin]

I'm guessing you have already looked through the 24 pages of threads in this Sub-forum for ideas?

 

[SteveS07]

Not all 24, the first 2, working my way through. The reason I didn't wait is I'm interested in peoples opinions with the specific room details provided.

 

[Manaphy]

How about this? I think it is inspired.

 

[AkTom]

I'm guessing you have already looked through the 24 pages of threads in this Sub-forum for ideas?

Mike... You weren't supposed to give me that information. Dang, as a rookie winemaker, I don't need those crazy thoughts running loose in my head ;-)

 

[JohnT]

Assuming that ..

1) you have a tight budget and
2) you are a wine maker..

My preference is to set up a series of "Diamond-cube" racks.
I built one for myself and also one for a very dear friend of mine..

Photo 1 (after building)
Photo 2 (after finish and loading)

Note: The door on the left leads to another room of my friend's basement.

This cost me under $200.00 to build (not including stain and varnish) and can hold a multitude of wine in a very limited space. Each full cube can hold up to 5 cases of wine!

I as a winemaker, I like this format because I can put most of an entire batch of wine into a single cube. I then can use a singe bottleneck tags to ID the wine. This saves on having to label each bottle, making reuse of bottles easier.

The one in the picture took just a day to build and IMHO looks fantastic.

 

[Johnd]

For a tight budget and tight space, as JohnT has depicted, the diamond racks will give you much more bang for your buck. Ultimately, number of bottles you can handle will be much greater with the diamond system than the individual bottle rack system depicted in your plan drawing.

For a blend of efficiency, cost, and appearance, you could consider a combination of both. Having just completed a wine room, that is the option selected for my room, if you are interested, the link to the thread on this forum is: http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52998

 

[Mismost]

How about this? I think it is inspired.

I like curves on women...wood not so much...had to build.
What if you squared this off...use the two corners for stacking carboys, I just hate that wasted space in the corners and it is a trash trap.
Really liked JohnT's diamond cubes...I gotta remember that detail.

 

[sandea1]

Since you are on a tight budget it is good that you have made this decision.You have not posted any pictures of the current fruit cellar so it would be a bit difficult for me to help you. But I would like to share my experience with you. Since you have a small space you could arrange it neatly by adding small cabinets to your wall so that it would look spacious. You could refinish your current fruit cellar to make it more elegant. I would like to share a blog which I found online and it would help you since you are new to winemaking. Here is the blog http://www.lancastercustoms.com/blog/wine-cellar/tips-properly-storing-wine-cellar/ and I hope that you would find it useful.

 

[kevinlfifer]

Is this for storage only. bottles? carboys? or are you making wine in there as well?

My cellar storage is 10'x2'. The racks are 2 bottles deep. You could rack the one end of your room and it would hold 480 bottles.

http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46912

Here is the thread showing the progression of my construction.

I used dead Ash trees from our ravine.

 

[Minnesotamaker]

This is my favorite style of rack and can be easily made with scraps and salvaged wood. It is a bit more labor intensive, but stores bottles nicely. You just cut your verticals and then glue/tack with nail gun, the short horizontal pieces for each wine space. A small spacer "jig" makes it quick and easy to attach the bottle supports at a uniform spacing for all the bottles. Run a horizontal board across the top and bottom and you have yourself a wine rack. I've made quite a few of these in a uniform size and then stack them as needed. The reason I like these racks is that each bottle has its own space, you can remove any bottle at any time with out a whole pile of wine shifting. This style rack is also pretty efficiently spaced. Much better than some of the bent wire wine racks you can buy.

 

[Loghousewines]

What size are the verticals?

 

[Minnesotamaker]

What size are the verticals?

For the verticals, I just got a 4x8 sheet of 3/4" particle board. Cut it into pieces that are 9" x 22.75". The bottle rests are 9" deep and 1/2" square. I did rip a small 45 degree angle on one corner of the rests so that the bottles have a flatter surface to rest on. If you cut a spacer that is 9" x 2.5", you can use it as a jig to glue/tack the spacers evenly up the verticals. Cut another spacer that is 9" by 3" and use it to space the verticals evenly across the top and bottom of the rack. I also tacked a top, bottom, and back on my rack for stability. These sizes will give you a 7 bottle tall rack. If you stack racks more than 2 high, be sure to anchor them to the wall. This size works well for standard bottles. Some of the fatter bottles (champagne bottles for instance) won't fit in a rack with the above dimensions.

 

[Loghousewines]

Awesome, thanks. I have been trying to design a rack so this helps much.

 

[Landwaster]

i made one these single bottle racks based on a design in a back issue of winemaker. It's about 5x5' and holds 100. The design is easy and cheap but it took a bit of time to just mark the spacing and nail each individual piece to the beams (for that design at least). It's almost filled up and I'll have another 100 bottles to add this year. I'll probably do the much simpler diamond design this time around, maybe with slightly smaller spacing than the previous poster since we do a large amount but smaller batches.

 

[LittleBearGameFarm]

The smaller wine rack on top of the case on the right is making me really nervous