As I mentioned, my wife and I finally finished building our house, and while most of the design choices were made by my wife (Thank God), she did leave the wine wall up to me. After doing quite a bit of research and talking to a handful of ‘full service’ wine cellar companies, I decided the best option for us was to design the wall myself, and then sub out the install of the glass, cooling unit, and rack installation. While it was definitely a little more work managing the project myself (really was minimal compared to building our house, which we also acted as the GC on), we saved a ton of money, and ultimately I’m really happy with how it came out. We have a very contemporary styled home, so I ended up going with vintage view racking through Wine Racks of America, as they were the most cost efficient, fit with our style, and allowed us to maximize the number of bottles we could fit within the space (14 feet long, 8 feet high, and 3 feet deep). For what it’s worth, I had a great experience with Wine Racks of America both in regards to pricing and service. There’s great literature on their site around racking options, and using the vintage view specs, I designed the cellar to the best of my ability, and then ran it past one of their design consultants (which they offer as a free service). Turns out I was slightly off with my measurements and would have ordered too much racking, so I’m glad I spoke with them first. Total storage is around 1,000 bottles, and includes special racking for magnum’s and larger format bottles (bottom/center of the wall).
For the glass, I used a local company who I found online and specializes in wine cellar installs, and went with the thicker ½ inch glass compared to 3/8. Turns out it was the same glass company that the full service wine cellar companies sub their glass out to here locally, so I got a great install for a fraction of the price. The cooling unit was the only real mistake that I made. Even though in the back of my mind I knew it was a bad call, our HVAC company that we used for our house swore up and down that they do wine cooling as well, and that this ‘commercial’ unit they were recommending was going to be perfect, and that it would be completely quiet. Yeah…quiet like a freaking freight train. This thing ROARED. It was so bad I could literally hear it from upstairs. Long story short, I found another local company that specializes in wine cellar cooling, and they replaced the unit with a modified mini-split unit and it works flawlessly, and is whisper quiet (literally quieter than our sub-zero refrigerator).
So despite the extra research/effort on my end, it was a fairly painless process, and well worth it in the end. As we all know, part of the fun of this ‘hobby’ is collecting bottles that we enjoy, and that often times have some sort of story or special meaning behind them. So for me, being able to easily look at the majority of my wines through the glass wall in the middle of my dining room is a beautiful thing. Is it the most practical and energy efficient cellar ever? Absolutely not. Does it keep the wines at a consistent 55 degrees and bring a huge smile to my face every time I walk into the house? You bet your ass it does.