Custom Glass Wine Cellars in A Grand Contemporary Home

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From the jaw-dropping custom glass wine cellars of the West Coast, we make our way down to the central lone star state of Texas. Our client’s incredible estate is a homeowner’s dream, and it was no question that his wine storage closet had to be the epitome of an inspiring contemporary wine cellar as well. In this article, we want to walk you through how we built this beautiful wine cellar and hopefully give you some useful insights for your future project!  

Planning This Custom Glass Wine Cellar 

Modern wine cellars come in many shapes and sizes, designs and colors, vibes and moods. What makes customizing a great choice is that you get to tell us how you want your modern wine cellar to look exactly as you envision it to be. We’ve got a bunch of different wine cellar lighting styles, marble decanting tables, and of course, wine racks to make your dream come true.  

When you think of modern wine cellars, we bet the first thing that comes to mind is an all-metal and glass type of cellar. At Coastal Custom Wine Cellars though, we go beyond typical definitions. Like in this modern home wine cellar, we combined the magic of mixing together metal, wood, and glass elements to create the perfect custom modern design. From the studs to the backer boards, wood & metal wine racks, and weather-stripping, every piece you see in this space is custom-made and installed.  

The initial concept was to create a wine cellar that flowed freely with the home’s interior. If you go through the pictures, you’ll see that the wine-drinking area outside the cellar is clad with a neutral palette of dark browns, creams, whites, and ivory. A huge indoor plant in the corner gives the room that subtle pop of color. Since we wanted this modern wine cellar to stand out just a little more, we opted for a darker theme of browns and blacks. This increased the contrast in the entire drinking room, making it feel more restful. Imagine yourself sipping your favorite bottle of Reisling, Pinot, or Chardonnay here and bonding with your family and friends!  

The wine cooling system is mounted on this custom glass wine cellar’s high ceiling.

A Wine Cooling System for Limited Storage Areas 

We were working with a newly constructed Texas home with a wine cellar that somebody was already starting to build. Our Senior Design Consultant Andre Trabazos and the Coastal Wine Cellars team were brought in to finish the work. But based on a very careful assessment, we had to remove everything and start over.  

After installing the studs, we ran the line set for the cooling system before closing up the wall. We brought the HS 8600 from US Cellar Systems, one of the industry’s premier wine cellar refrigeration system providers.  

The HS 8600 is part of the company’s High Static Cooling Series, designed to provide cool air to medium and high-temperature rooms. It is a ducted cooling system where the condenser is placed outside the house, and the coil is inside the adjacent mechanical room.  

The best thing about ducted cooling units is that they don’t take up space and don’t operate with much noise. You’ll only see two registers on the ceiling for air inflow and return. Likewise, when you go inside modern custom glass wine cellars with this kind of AC then close the door, the sound and vibrations feel absolutely muffled.  

This wine cooling system also comes with an aluminum rust-proof housing and an automatic expansion valve which helps balance the humidity — perfect for a home wine cellar!  

Enter Through Sealed Glass Wine Cellar Doors 

To showcase the entire wine collection and make it visible from the outside, we went for framed modern glass wine cellar doors. Our oversized door design comes with stainless steel framing that’s fully foam-insulated. Yes, insulation is not limited only to the walls but can also be used to seal air gaps around the door. This ensures that no air can ever come through it when it’s closed.  

Other methods of sealing air gaps around the door include installing weather stripping and U-channels. These are similar to those rubber gaskets you can find in a lot of hardware stores. But since this is a wine cellar door, and not your ordinary home door, our team can recommend what kind of weather stripping would best suit your wine cellar door.

The glass we used is dual-paned and 1”-thick. Together with the rest of the insulation, we were able to ensure the 55-degree temperature we were looking to maintain in this room.  

Diversified Racking Plan: Wooden Wine Racks and Metal Wine Racking With a Secret  

Finally, after the insulation was set, the cooling system was in place, and the inner wall was up, it was time to bring in the wine racks. Since we wanted a dark theme, we opted for Alderwood wine racking. We stained the wood with a rustic color and smoothened it off with a lacquer coating.  

We built racks on all three sides of this modern wine closet and combined different racking configurations to enhance its visual appeal.

The board you see on top of the wooden shelves is the backer board attached with VintageView’s metal wine racks. Do you see how the backlighting makes a difference in this custom glass wine cellar?

In the middle, you’ll see a single wooden reveal row with a light balance underneath so all the bottle labels are easily readable. For the metal wine racking, we chose VintageView’s triple-deep, black metal wine racks. These are part of VintageView’s wall-mounted series, and they are very durable in holding heavy wine bottles despite their slender appearance.  

A pair of metal rods could hold three standard-sized 750ml bottles. Instead of mounting the metal racks to the drywall, we installed backer boards that are about 0.5” away from the main wall and mounted the metal racks there. Our backer boards allowed us to run LED light strips on the backside of the wall, giving that reversed spotlight effect.  

At the center of the wine racking is a small cove area the owner could use to decant his wines. Right now, it is adorned with a glass sculpture illuminated by a simple overhead puck light.  

We installed a third type of wine cellar lighting, which is our acrylic LED light panels.  This is an innovation where the LED panels are hidden behind a translucent acrylic board to produce softly diffused lighting.  We often use this to upgrade a wine cellar wall or provide a stunning shelf base for wine racks. 

All in all, this entire custom wine racking could hold 750 bottles of wine! If you have way more bottles than that, no problem! Our team can modify your racking design so it fits your entire collection perfectly, no matter how small or limited your space is. 

A Prized Wine Collection Deserves a Prized Wine Cellar. Work with Coastal Custom Wine Cellars!  

Customizing modern glass wine cellars can give you endless design possibilities. But the most important thing, though, is that you get to ensure that every detail in your wine cellar is built the right way, according to the dimensions of your space and the ambient temperatures of your location.  We’ve repaired dozens of haphazardly-built wine cellar before and we sympathize with clients who have spent an enormous fortune on their wine cellars only to have it repaired just a few months after. One of the common mistakes was they worked with a contractor who did not specialize in wine cellars.  Imagine thousand of dollars going down the drain!  

For a hassle-free wine cellar construction project, work with Coastal Custom Wine Cellars! We are wine cellar design and construction specialists who have years of experience in the wine cellar industry. We design, plan, and build fully refrigerated, custom glass wine cellars and execute every plan professionally and meticulously. 

Our custom glass wine cellar displays bottles either in a label-forward or cork-forward position.

Call us at +1 (949) 200 – 8134, and our team will be happy to assess your place at the soonest time!