apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

it looks cool...

but too bad it will ruin the wine (unless they drink through it all really fast). wine is supposed to be stored in a cool, dark place. being out in a wine rack is just about the worst thing you can do to a bottle of wine...

I can't be the only one who read "wine racks on the wall" and "San Francisco" and thought "uh oh!"

OMG! amy... you are sooo right. i'm surprised that as a native northern californian i didn't think of that problem with the design, too!

hellooooo earthquake country!

my mother is a retired sommelier and uses a large custom system like this one to store her collection:

http://www.containerstore.com/browse/Product.jhtml?searchId=22400958&itemIndex=5&CATID=74103&PRODID=60078

With this ikea wine rack I frequently had the problem of the bottle being too big and not fitting.

a bit ostentatious?

Hi, I'm David, who built the racks in this post. A number of you have expressed concern about two things that we considered before building. First, we were aware that exposing the wine to the light and changing temperature was not ideal for the wine. Second, we considered the regular (though almost always very minor) earthquakes.

We decided to proceed anyway because none of our wine is "special wine." We are not intending on keeping it for long, and they are all bottles that we would have no problem opening on any old night (okay, we might save a few of them for a weekend, but seriously, nothing very special). So, none of the bottles should be on the racks long enough for the exposure to matter. Plus, it's San Francisco. It rarely gets over 75 degrees in our apartment. Our living room is like most cellars.

As for the earthquakes, these racks are actually extremely sturdy, and the IKEA pieces are quite tight on most of the bottles. In fact, as a previous commenter mentioned, some bottles (most sparkling wines, and some traditional Syrah bottles) don't even fit. Our very large cat regular jumps onto the shelf and runs all around on them, and none of the wine is disturbed. Earthquakes strong enough to disturb these bottles are pretty rare, and it's a risk we're willing to take. Since none of the bottles are particularly special, if at some point we lose a few of them it won't be big deal.

I love it!

Very nicely done - it looks much more expensive than it is. Also, it's a neat way of turning the wine bottles into fun momentos of your trips to the wine country (since it's both storage and display).

We've got plaster walls here in Paris, and while the temperatures can get quite hot here in the Summer, we tend to buy (and drink) the same types of wine - stuff we're not keeping around for long - so I may give a version of this a try. Thanks for the great idea.

I think this is a really stylish solution. I wish I could do something similar (also, not special wines), but I'm pretty sure that the heat in my house during most of the year would still be a problem. :(

I'd actually like something like this to hold the empty (but special) bottles - maybe if we signed each one with the date and occasion... Hmmmm....

Looks good, a great feature for the room.

I went for Menu's black vertical racks:
http://www.wineware.co.uk/Menu Display Wine Rack%2C Black--4662539-details.htm

I put a couple up, one above the other, and they look very good. The only problem is keeping the rack full so that they look good - I keep drinking the wine too quickly!!! ;-)