Custom Wine Racks For A Very Large Home Wine Collection

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The entire custom wine racks was made from the same type of wood — Alder. The color you see is from a stain and we polished it to smoothen the texture.

Custom wine racks bring plenty of benefits to any wine cellar, whether it be a home wine room or a commercial wine cellar right within your hotel bar. Imagine getting to play around with your creativity and imagination and tailor the size and shape exactly to the dimensions of your space! It may take time to obtain custom wine cellar racking more than over-the-counter racks, but they will save you more time and resources in the future, especially if you have a growing wine collection!  

Take for instance this custom wine cellar we built inside a home. From the outside, it may not look as grandiose because it goes deep rather than wide, but go inside the cellar, and you’ll be nothing less than astounded because of its custom-built wooden wine racks. Continue reading the article to get to know more about this project! 

First Things First: A Cool, Well-Insulated Wine Cellar 

The owner of this wine cellar was a passionate wine collector who valued capacity more than aesthetics. He has more or less over a million dollars worth of wine in his collection, with plenty of rare wines, and he’s the type of drinker who buys his wines in advance and plans to enjoy them 10-20 years later. Creating a long-lasting climate-controlled environment was the top priority for this wine room. To achieve this, we needed to implement the right combination of insulation and cooling, which we worked very hard on.

5-Inch Spray Foam Insulation  

This home’s wine room was originally part of the garage, and we had it built up about 12 inches from the original floor elevation. Since this was a new conversion project, most of the walls were newly installed. However, instead of building the same quality of walls as the rest of the garage, we injected 5 inches of spray foam insulation within them to obtain the highest R-value we could have for this wine cellar. The owner wanted to maintain a 60% humidity and 55-degree F temperature inside the wine room, and thick insulation was the 1st step.  

A Cooling System That Did Not Obstruct the Custom Wooden Wine Racks  

Second, we installed a ducted split-system cooling unit which we custom-built for this wine room. Despite the relatively large size of the cellar and the powerful cooling system that it needed, step inside, and you literally can’t hear the cooling system or even see it. Because it is ducted, the air enters through a grill into the wine room. We placed the condenser right outside the house, and the air handler in the garage just right outside the wine cellar. This ducted cooling system had very high BTUs, so it was powerful and durable enough to last for a really long time.  

Parts of our custom wine racks are visible from the outside through this contemporary glass wine cellar door.

On the left, you’ll see the grill where the cool air enters. On the right, you’ll see the condenser that’s placed outside the house.

A Contemporary Wine Cellar Door With An Automatic Bottom Seal 

To complete the enclosure of this custom wine cellar, we custom-built and installed a wine cellar door with a tempered glass center and dense wooden framing.  

The glass is thermally insulated and dual-paned, which means that no matter the difference in temperature inside and outside the cellar, the glass will remain clear without any condensation. The warm air that comes in contact with the exterior side of the door will not be able to affect the cold air that comes in contact with the interior side of the door.  

On the other hand, the wooden frame is made from Alder wood. It was manufactured to have laminated veneer lumber in its core which enhances the quality of the wood and prevents the wood from warping or wearing out easily. This kind of engineering intervention guarantees that the framing will last for a long time.  

At the bottom perimeter of the door, we built-in automatic door locks. We fondly call them automatic guillotines because they immediately drop once the door is closed. What’s the purpose of these, you might ask? Cold air is dense and usually concentrates near the floor and the bottom of the door, so cold air molecules will more likely escape the room through air gaps between the door and the floor. A guillotine further creates a barrier to prevent the cold air from seeping out.  

Custom Wooden Wine Racks Built the Height of the Room 

If capacity is your priority, just like this homeowner, building your custom wine racks up to the ceiling height is one of the best approaches for maximum capacity. Wherever you glance around this wine cellar, all you’ll see is wooden wine racking. There’s no dead space or empty walls because we made sure that every inch of this room was functional and usable.  

We designed this custom wine rack wall using Alder wood, a durable hardwood variety that comes with beautiful and natural-looking grain patterns. Since we wanted this cellar to have that slightly old-world feel, we finished the Alder with some Old American-colored stain.  

Deep Wine Racks for Increased Capacity 

Besides maximizing the height of this wine cellar, we also built the wine cellar rack deep enough to hold two bottles per compartment. The room was relatively large enough such that even with double deep wine racks, there was still enough walking space for the owner in between.  

The size of every compartment was also specific to the size of the bottles in his wine collection. While he had a mix of different wines and spirits like reds, rieslings, champagne, and large formats, about 95% of the bottles were French Burgundies. Burgundies usually come in 3 ¾-sized bottles, so we had to adjust the size of every compartment to fit this size.  

If you can take a mental tour of the cellar and enter it, you’ll also notice that we organized the wines into different sections — mostly according to the type of wine — so it’s pretty straightforward to navigate and get the wine you’re looking for! 

The wood for this custom wine rack was specially selected for its quality.

A High-Capacity Wine Room with a Warm Rustic Ambiance 

A contemporary-looking wine cellar with an old-world ambiance was the aim of this project, look-wise. So, to really get into this vibe, we also used wine barrel flooring to cover the entire ground. We were able to obtain the rights to buy wine barrels, flatten them out, and repurpose them to use as flooring, and we installed every stave meticulously, so the floor surface was smooth and flat.  

We didn’t change the look of the staves because we wanted to preserve the original beauty of the barrels. The result was a very soft and relaxed pathway that lets you enjoy your time inside the cellar.  

As a final touch, we also extended a portion of the cable racks to have a tabletop that was just enough to hold some decorative, a temperature gauge, and some space for decanting.  

Create High-Quality, Custom Wine Racks with Coastal Custom Wine Cellars! 

One of the things we love most about our work is we get to collaborate with you, the owner, to come up with the best wine cellar and custom wine rack ideas. We always put forward the importance of going for a design and plan that satisfies your preferences no matter how big or small they are, and we absolutely love doing the hard work to achieve a very sustainable and long-lasting wine cellar.  

It’s your wine cellar, and we’re here to help you materialize your vision with our expertise and experience in the wine cellar industry! Whether you need to overhaul your wine cellar, bring in some new custom wine racks, or need help figuring out why your cellar is not as cold and humid as it should be, talk to us at Coastal Custom Wine Cellars!  

Our representatives are always eager, friendly, and excited to listen, and we can start working on your cellar in the soonest time!  

Contact us today at +1 (949) 200 – 8134.