What Type of Wine Rack Is Right for Your Home?
Show off Your Collection with Wine Storage Racks
Wine racks offer inexpensive and space-efficient storage of multiple wine bottles. Even better, wine storage racks are available in a full range of sizes, allowing you to put a smaller rack in your kitchen or dining room so you have a selection of wines close at hand during mealtime while installing larger wine racks in your cellar to provide secure storage of the other bottles in your collection. There are four basic design variations you can choose from: free-standing, modular, shelf-mounted and wall-mounted wine racks.
Major Styles of Wine Storage Racks
Free-standing wine racks are generally compact and designed for kitchen or dining room placement, offering storage of up to a dozen bottles of wine (or more, depending on your preferences and the amount of available floor space). They tend to be horizontally rather than vertically oriented, since the corks of vertically arranged wine bottles tend to come into contact with greater quantities of air, which can dry out the cork and affect the quality of the wine.
Modular wine racks are ideal for cellars and long-term storage in controlled conditions. They use interlocking, diagonally oriented compartments to maximize storage space and allow for easy organization and labeling of your wine collection. Shelf-mounted wine racks are much like their modular cousins, except they're designed to occupy single shelves rather than rising to a height of multiple levels.
Wall-mounted wine racks are ideal if you only have a few bottles of wine to store, or if the rack is serving primarily as a decorative accessory. However, you can also get wall-mounted wine storage racks that are designed specifically for use in cellars, which provide secure storage space for dozens or even hundreds of bottles.
Wine Rack Materials
Plastic wine ranks are inexpensive, but they're not highly recommended if you have valuable bottles of wine, since they are limited in their capacity to bear weight and you don't want to risk losing a nice bottle of wine because a flimsy rack collapsed. Wooden wine racks and metal wine racks tend to make better options; wrought iron wine racks are a good option, as they're sturdy and non-corrosive, providing a long life of effective wine storage.
If you're keeping bottles of wine on hand for any length of time, wine racks are highly recommended. They allow you to securely store wine in climate-controlled conditions, maximizing the value of your bottles as well as protecting the wine's flavor and composition.
