Renters Wine rack (planning phase)

I will be bottling 3- 5gal batches of wine in the next month and starting some more batches so it is time for a wine rack. I just moved, but I am still renting a house so I am planning a wine rack that can be broken down and used to transport the wine the next time I move. After moving 250 bottles of beer in cardboard boxes I don’t want to repeat that with wine.

Goals:
1) Each square can be used as a box to transport the wine.
2) Boxes are tall enough to stack, i.e. taller that wine bottles
3) Easily assembled and disassembled.
4) Expandable so I can add more as I need to
5) Simple and repeatable to produce
6) Boxes hold appro 16 bottles

Here are my first thoughts and renditions. Outside of box 15”x15”x15” I think pictures speak louder than words.

At the moment the boxes are bolted together, this won’t make for easy disassembly once the rack is full so I am looking to improve on this. All comments are welcome I have thick skin so point out any problems you may see. Design will be made from wood (probably 1/2"x4'x8' sheets of oak or fir plywood) I will be stopping by Lowes and home depot to check what is available and for what price.







Edit: By the way this was my lunch time model so it was done quick and dirty for concept.

I found a similar idea with plans over at winepress.us forums that aren't necessarily planned to be stored in the diamond pattern, but have internal X's which make the design very similar to yours...I think these are 20x20.

I will be making them whenever I move into my apartment knowing that I won't have a place for a permanent rack.

If you can't find them (or don't want to search) - send me a pm with your email and I'll send you the plans. Couldn't attach because 19k is the limit for PDF attachments here, this is 900k.

Couldn't find the plans you spoke of but have revised my plans after some thought.

Boxes are now 18x18x14. The new design is much easier to assemble and disassemble and add boxes. Which is one of the big things that the original was missing.

The dividers will help with keeping like kinds together and also when in transport keeping the bottles more secure.

A couple of models to show off the design.

That's similar to the plans I mentioned. The ones that I found have those vertical slats in yours crossed diagonally to make an X inside the box.

I like your idea for ease of building, but probably holds a bit less.

Anyways, PM me if you want me to email them to you.

I'm in the same boat. I'm making wine, but will end up moving before I drink it all. My concerns with designing a wood crate is cost and weight. The issue of cost is different for everyone, so I won't comment on that.

Weight - how much do you think it will weigh? I did a rough estimate and I came up with 65lbs when full.

Here's the numbers I used.
2 lbs per bottle
10.75 sq ft of 1/2 oak plywood per crate
Oak Plywood is 1.64 lbs per sq ft (based on internet search)

My gut feel is that's too heavy to easily move, but...moving shouldn't happen often, so maybe I should suck it up and deal with it.

My estimate is different. I weighed 2 750ml bottles full last night and both were close to 3 lbs. I was assuming 20 lbs for the wood glue and screws for the crates (just my shoot from the hip estimate).

So i am thinking of about 92lbs per crate full.

I am a decent size guy, don't plan on moving often and have found i would rather carry heavier boxes than make a million trips when moving. But weight should be considered when constructing.

As reference I just moved and i was carrying two 24 bottle cases of beer at a time down three flights of stairs, just so i could make less trips (still took about 10). Not sure what they weighed though. Luckily there were no bottle casualties.

This recent move is the main reason for me planning ahead for the wine.

Edit: Cost I am still working on. I will post prices once i decide on what to use.

-Smee44

Consider horizontal slats in your box.
Water is 8 lbs/gal so that is 280 lbs of water on your bottom jug. That seems excessive.

OsbornBrewing said:

Consider horizontal slats in your box.
Water is 8 lbs/gal so that is 280 lbs of water on your bottom jug. That seems excessive.

Click to expand...

I am not sure i follow your math or logic. There are only 8 bottles stacked at 3 lbs each if all the weight was transfered to the bottom bottle (which it is not some is supported by the walls) there would be 21lbs on the bottom bottle.

OsbornBrewing said:

Consider horizontal slats in your box.
Water is 8 lbs/gal so that is 280 lbs of water on your bottom jug. That seems excessive.

Click to expand...

At the NYWCC where I work we stack wine horizontal with at least 12 bottles high. A full wine bottle is very strong. And a wine bottle holds 750 Ml. not a gallon.

mitch171 said:

At the NYWCC where I work we stack wine horizontal with at least 12 bottles high. A full wine bottle is very strong. And a wine bottle holds 750 Ml. not a gallon.

Click to expand...

You'll be surprised how much wall thickness variation a standard 750 litre bottle has in general by the manufacturing process. I'm talking 3:1 in wall thickness on many bottles. I diamond sawed off both ends of many wine bottles making sight glasses and liquid pressure chamber columns. I had many fail the "this is another junker" and cut another one. I'm talking a 70% failure rate in vast uneven wall thickness.

I would rather use thin panel boards as dividers like in carboard boxes preventing hard pressure contact points of glass on glass. My racks are 6" x 1" x 6' tall with vertical wood the holes support the bottles at the back and at the base of the neck to maintain a slight cork facing down. Now working on those 75 plus 1993 to 2004 era must put to good use of drinking it before it goes bad on us.

Cork facing down is now thought to be a bad idea. If you do so all the sediment is at the top of the bottle and when you stand it up or take the cork out all the sediment get resuspended. I have worked at several wineries and have always stacked bottles. I have never seen on break from weight on top. I have dropped a few on cement and they bounce. When they are filled the wine provides support and also absorbs the vibrations. Now drop an empty bottle and it will shatter.

Been looking at wine racks myself, but it is amazing how many commercial display quality wine racks are out there on Craigslist and whatnot. Based on some of the things I have seen, I know I can pick something up there for less than the cost of equivalent materials. I even saw one set of racks capable of holding almost 700 bottles going for $450.

I am not worried about the stacking of the wine bottles, I have been storing them stack directly on top of each other for some time. And so do many wine stores.

Randar, I agree that there are many to be found but the key to this design is that it doubles as a carrying case without removing the wine or any major disassembly. If I owned a house i would have a more permanent wine rack that had more "style". Right now i am looking for function and convenience.

SWMBO will kill me if I don't have a really good way of moving all this wine and beer next time we move. Beer crates are defiantly the next project

I laid out the pieces onto a 4x8 sheet of plywood and can get 2 boxes easy per sheet. I probably wont get to Lowes and home depot till this weekend to check material cost and what is available.

Thanks all for the comments

Sort of off topic since you guys have gone off on your ideas, but I made a wine rack out of cutting 4" PVC pipe into 10-12" sections. Fits the bottles nicely and keeps the weight off the glass and makes it easy to grab them.

Just another idea...

Sorta update: I bought the supplies for at least 4 boxes last weekend and built two boxes. I will be updating the OP with cost, design and pictures. Probably won't happen till this weekend.

The ones that are done work great, Heavy when full but manageable for me, SWMBO couldn't pick it up.

How about putting something on the back (bottom when transported) so you can easily stack the boxes on a wheeled cart?

B