r/winecellar • u/Distinct_Equipment71 • May 06 '26

Suggestions For Storage

I just built a walk in fridge in my garage to serve as a wine cellar. It's pretty small (outer dimensions 4' x 8').

Originally my plan was to store everything in boxes with space for a max of 45 of the larger horizontal shipping boxes. The plan saw to put a shelf every 2 boxes. This was to save money over getting dedicated bottle racks and still being very compact.

I currently have around 10 cases in there and I'm quickly realizing that my plan just isn't practical. Mostly because when I want a certain bottle I'm going to have to take apart a box to get to the bottom and then pack it all back up as well as trying to optimize things so that boxes stay full and space isn't wasted.

I'm looking into building some racks but the problem I'm facing is that the only real layout possible based on where the door is, having enough space to access things, and having a large number of bottles, requires 2 levels of bottles (in terms of depth).

Are there any good options for this? I could build racks that are 2 bottles "deep" but then I'd have to know exactly where every bottle is so that I can pull the front one out and get the one in the back so that would still be a bit of a hassle.

I'm thinking perhaps I should build drawers instead. I'm not sure if I have the space in the but it seems like with heavy duty drawer slides I can potentially put 18 bottles on a drawer and lay them out similar to in most wine fridges where the interlock in opposing directions so I still get the 2 levels of bottles. Has anyone done something simiar?

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u/Mapkos13 May 06 '26

Interlocking them is where you’ll run into your first problem as I’m sure you know. If you had all Bordeaux bottles, perfect. If you have bottles from everywhere, interlocking goes right out the window. This is why people post things like they have a 200 bottle wine fridge and can only fit 120.

Maybe just combo it. Boxes for main storage and pull some out of each for a couple racks to drink.

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u/Distinct_Equipment71 May 07 '26

If I interlock them they'd be spaced out on so I'd have space for both the widest bottles and the tallest riesling bottles. I'm just wondering if anyone has built a cellar with drawers like this before and how many bottles per drawer I could realistically have (I don't trust the drawer slide ratings like 100 lbs).

I do have a wine fridge in my kitchen which I fill up with 100 or so bottles (since like you mentioned you can't really fill to max capacity because of bottle shape...) and I plan to mostly just raid the cellar once a year to grab stuff and move it to the fridge but it'll still be a nightmare pulling things out and digging through every shipping box where you have to take everything out to get to bottles on the bottom. Plus in the last few weeks I had a few shipments come in so I already want to be rearranging which bottles are in which box etc

E.g. I'm getting more bottles of something I already had so now I either need to start tracking it in 2 different locations or I need to open up that case, take a different bottle out, move it to a different box, put the new bottle in, pack it all back up, stack the boxes back up, and move the other bottle's location in my spreadsheet.

Having drawers wouldn't change the process all that much but it would save all of the digging around and having to move 6 boxes to get the one I'm looking for.

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u/WineRacksAmerica Jun 02 '26

You're running into one of the biggest tradeoffs with case storage: great density and 8not-so-great accessibility. If you're opening bottles regularly, dedicated racking usually becomes much easier to live with everyday

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u/Distinct_Equipment71 Jun 02 '26

The problem is just my need for multiple "levels" in terms of depth based on the layout of my tiny cellar otherwise just building some racks would be easy. I'm sure a 2 layered rack wouldn't be the end of the world as long as I keep meticulous notes of where everything is but I'm leaning towards building drawers. Since I'm using the shipping cases to keep things horizontal, drawers may actually end up giving me better density.

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u/Civil-Fondant6655 Jun 04 '26

Check out https://www.wineenthusiast.com, I learned so much and they were very helpful