How To Choose A Wine Cellar Racks

The objective of a wine cellar rack is to carry bottles securely in a horizontal position, in as dense an arrangement as possible.

It is important for bottles sealed with corks to be laid down to keep the cork moist. Bottles with screw caps can be stored standing upright but generally this is less space-efficient.

Racks can be individual cells of timber, steel or plastic, simple shelving or diamond-shaped bins.

Individual wine cellar racking is the most convenient for selecting bottles. Some racks can cause damage to bottle labels; designs vary in bottle density; price variations are more to do with aesthetics than efficiency.

Bins carrying 12 or 24 bottles are ideal when large numbers of the same wine are being stored but the resident bottles can be susceptible to destruction if subjected to earthquake movement.

Diamond cubes and rectangular wine bins can be useful for storing wine bought by the case, however, as you drink your way down through the bin you will create more and more wasted space. Mixing different wines within a bin will lead to constant disturbance, as you will have to move the top wines to see which wines are stored below!

When choosing wine cellar racks, wherever possible, use single depth racking. Racking which carries bottles two deep can lead to difficulty in finding some wines and unnecessary disturbance of wines moved to reach the wines behind.

As a rough guide each square meter of racking can carry 100 bottles.