I am building a wine cellar in my new construction home. I have everything figured out except where to get the racks. I was looking at Wine Cellar Innovations but have not been very impressed with their service. I have a 10 x 10 space and would like some help with planning out how to best utilize the space. Anyone have any recommendations on a company that would be helpful?
You get the maximum storage if you use bins because you don't waste as much air space. The downside is that you can't easily get to the bottom bottles and you really will be cursing when you try to stack a bunch of Rhone or Burgundy shaped bottles. The alternative, which I use, is shelves that are spaced about 3 3/4 inches apart. I just made them. A Bordeaux bottle is about 3 inches diameter, a Burgundy bottle is about 3 1/4 inches so 3 3/4 gets you enough space. Then space a couple of shelves over 4" for weird shapes like Turley, Pax, Champagne, some Beaujolais, or some other big bottles, or bigger if you tend to buy mags.
I just took plywood, ripped it to 9" and built shelves for the wines myself.
Alternatively, there is IWA that has pretty good prices but you pay for shipping, and there other places that sell racks. My suggestion if you have time is to check out some local restaurant supply places - they often have things like that.
I don't know if you have a Menards store around you, but we just got some plastic stackable bins that are on sale right now for around $7.50 each. You can set them directly on the basement floor and they stack up and hold about 14 bottles in each one. Then when they're empty, you can nest them together out of the way. We stacked them three high and have them full and they seem like they're going to be fine. They're like industrial bins, open on the front and solid on the end and sides.
