Wine Closet

What is a wine lover to do then if he or she wants more storage but can't justify the cost of a larger rack or cabinet system? That is what I am here to help you with today, I'll show you what I have done, however brief it may be, and hopefully it might inspire you to take on a similar venture. One which is quite Easy and well worth it in both time and money.

So, what can we do to store our precious wine. Well if you're good a building things and have the tools then you could always make your own rack set up, the cost of wood is pretty low so this could be a great option for many. For me though this wasn't really an option as I basically have no talent what so ever when it comes to building things. So for those of you like me I have a great and fairly simple solution, and that's to use multiple small rack and consolidate them with a few dollars where you happen to have some free space. Doing it this way saves quite a lot of time compared to making your own from scratch and also saves a lot of money as opposed to buying a large cabinet or rack. Of course another perk to this one is that it really doesn't take up too much space and can be expanded if need be quite quickly. So, time now to explain how to go about with this whole project.

Well, first things first you need to actually find a place to build this thing. You can really put it anywhere you want such as an empty room or a bare wall. For me it was a useless closet that was only good for storing coats, and seeing as how I only have three of those I decided this would be a great place to build. It also had a nice shelf at the top of it which was the perfect size to fit my wine glasses and a small decanter. Plus being a closet that you can actually walk into a bit it's like having a little wine cellar in my apartment, which is just cool.

So, after you have found a nice place to set up your new wine gear you need just a few more things to get this all built.

The next thing that is need, and of course the most important, is the actual wine racks to use. Here you can again do what ever you like of course, it could be metal, wood or even plastic for all I care. For my wine closet though I got a great deal on some 24 bottle flat pack wooden wine racks from Home Goods (and by got a great deal I mean my dad found them and was kind enough to pick them up for me). They fit my needs perfectly as they are about waist high and were very easy to put together since they required no tools at all to put together. And of course they fit the bill as well being only $10 each, so with that great price and the room I had in that closet it meant their just had to be 3 of them (meaning a wonderful capacity of 72 bottles).

Now I could have stopped here and just had a closet full of wine with that nice shelf holding my glasses, but that would just not be quite as cool. So, I decided that these wine racks needed a counter top to keep my other wine accessories and leave me a place to open and serve my bottles. This was even easier then the wine racks were as all it took was a large piece of wood to act as the counter top and a few pieces of 2x4 to nail it all into the wall. Even me (again with the help of my father) with my little knowledge and skill at building was able to put this all together and for only around $35-40. Compared to the hundred you can spend on similar set ups I'd say it was money well spent.

So if you've thought of expanding your wine storage capacity but can't justify the money, especially in this economy), then I'd suggest giving this a try. All it takes is a few cheap and easy to assemble wine racks and a few bits of wood in an empty space and you can have a nice little wine cellar of your own. And the best part is if you need more space it's all easily expandable, I myself am putting in a nice small wine refrigerator to bump up my capacity to 84 and of course keep my nicer wines safer. It's easy and cheap and anyone can do it, I mean come on if I could you can too. So give it a try and then load it with all of the wines that you know and love.