Wood for wine cellars?

[Jamie Buxton]

Do we have any combination wood guys/wine guys here?

I'm looking at building a fancy wine storage system for a friend. It will go into a space which is climate-controlled for wine storage. That means the relative humidity will be in the 50%-75% range. I've never built anything to sit in that kind of humidity before. The racks will be plywood (probably T111 -- the stuff intended for residential exteriors) with solid lumber for edging and decorative parts. When I surf manufacturers' sites, they expound the virtues of redwood for this use -- and specifically redwood without any finish applied at all. They claim that only redwood can stand the high humidity. Me, I don't like redwood. The lumber which is available now is really cheesy. I'd prefer to use something better -- oak, western red cedar, or a tropical like ipe.

Anybody have any relevant experience?

[Per Swenson]

Jamie,

I can almost smell and taste the irony all the way

over here on the right cost. Irony, you say?

Yeah, you live in Redwoodcity.

Western red cedar be my choice, take a lookee here.

http://www.stratsplace.com/how_cellralphw.html

Per

[Ian Abraham]

60-70% humidity with a constant temperature wont give ANY problem to the wood. As long as there is no dampness involved, then any timber will be fine. You dont even have to use kiln dried, it will just suck up moisture from the air and end up at 12-14% moisture anyway.

My local climate is in the 60-100% humiduty range, no special precautions, except we dont dry wood to 8% here.:rolleyes: My pine, cypress, cedar, oak is all perfectly happy :)

White oak would probably be a good choice, it's pretty durable in case you do get moisture / spillage / a flood etc.

I think the manufactures are creating a bit of a myth to encourage folks to buy their expensive timber?

Ian

[Roger Everett]

Several years ago I built a wine cellar cabinet for a client, with a cooler unit designed to maintain 50 degrees and 70% hum.. I wanted straight grain Redwood for the racks. I also had a trouble trying to find the Redwood stock for the racks. What I ended up doing ( since my deal with client was cost plus ), was buying about 2 1/2 times the Redwood I thought I needed, and ripping off the straight grain to use and scraping the rest. A lot of waste, but I got the quality of material and the look I wanted.
Roger

[George Matthews]

Do we have any combination wood guys/wine guys here?

I'm looking at building a fancy wine storage system for a friend. Anybody have any relevant experience?


47400 This plan is based on a common concept, except my bottle slats are single piece rather than two pieces on each side to support the bottle. I also bevel the front edge to reduce knuckle nicks. I had planned to build a cellar of these modules made from red oak. I have plenty of shorts to work with.

47402That is a sketch I used to build the vertical bottle frames. These frames are fitted into a horizontal web frame that is daddoed at intervals to accept the bottle frames One frameis not installed to allow for larger bottles.

47398 The bottle 'slats' are notched and so is the mating style. I used a 1/4 plywood back to stiffen the assembly. There was some discussion about mould and wine stain. I could have used an exterior spar varnish, but opted for an exterior latex tinting base. Have used it for two years. We make 32 bottle wine kits a few times per year. Only issue is that despite our efforts to keep it full, there has been no need to build more modules!

[Jamie Buxton]

Thank you all for the advice.

[Lars A Stole]

I'm in the middle of a wine-cellar project myself. I am using H. mahogany (mostly from some shorts that I got at a good price). I considered redwood until a read about a wine cellar company who had a worker hospitalized from respiratory problems from redwood. This company would only sell mahogany racking after that (forget the company name). If you use redwood like many people do, be extra careful with the dust.

As for ipe, I would advise strongly against using this for anything large scale other than decking. Having recently worked on an ipe deck, I can tell you it is the hardest wood I have ever had to cut and the dust is scary. I used about 2 feet of clear 6" flex hose on my table saw and it turned dark yellow within minutes. I cleaned out the hose with warm water -- the color remained. Hate to think what someone's lungs would look like if they didn't use a respirator.

[Frank Fusco]

RE: What Lars said.
Any wood dust is potentially harmful to some people. Changing wood in a factory is a poor solution. Dust control, masks for workers, etc. should be the first consideration.
We have a lot of companies in my area that work with eastern red cedar. Their workers do not seem to have problems with it. But, I cannot tolerate the dust. Love the aroma of the wood, but the dust tears up my sinuses and I have to use a dust collector and mask when I work it.
That said, aromatic red cedar might be a good alternative to redwood. It is nearly a rot-proof, very reasonable priced and easy to work. Pretty too.

[Kelly C. Hanna]

I have seen White Oak, Red Oak, Redwood, Cedar and Mahogany. From what I was told in the Italian restuarants I worked in, most of the old wine cellars in Italy are made from Oak like the wine barrels. I am pretty sure it was White Oak, but don't quote me on that one.

If it were me I'd chose two woods that had a bit of contrast in color....have yet to see that type of combination.

[Stu Ablett in Tokyo Japan]

Jamie, I run a liquor shop here in Tokyo, I have a large wine cellar that I built (really just an insulated room) in the basement of our shop, there is anywhere between 4500 and 5000 bottles of wine in there at any one time. It is temp and humidity controlled. Don't even think about going over about 55% on the humidity in the wine cellar, you WILL lose your wine labels on the bottles to mold and rot, DAMHIKT!! People will tell you that in places like France, the underground cellars are near 70% humidity, so why not, but what they are missing is that in these cellars, the wine is stored in bins, or stacked, and they are NOT labeled, that happens when the wine is sold.

Ian is right about using just about any timber, it will not be a problems, my shelves are plywood, and they are just fine going on 12 years now, but I also mainly store cases, cardboard boxes and wooden boxes, I do have some loose bottles, but not many, they are usually upstairs in the shop, not the cellar.

If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them, but really, you are over thinking this, IMHO :D

Cheers!

[Ian Abraham]

Hmm... local weather station this morning has humidity at 97% :rolleyes:

Of course I dont keep my wine long enough for the labels to go mouldy, but at least now I have an excuse.

'We better drink this bottle before it gets mouldy dear' :D

Cheers

Ian

[Tom Jones III]

That means the relative humidity will be in the 50%-75% range.

I take it that you mean you've never built for such low humidity before? I guess you don't live in Houston. I don't see how you are going to have any problems using any of the normal woods.

[Brian Backner]

Just ran across this old thread looking for some information.

As I am in the process of designing and building a dedicated wine cellar, I have been doing a fair amount of research. One of the things that came across loud and clear from several sources was NEVER to use aromatic wood (like cedar) for racking. The aromatics outgassed by the wood can seep through the corks and ruin the wine! When the world finally switches to all screw top bottles, this will no longer be a restriction, but for the moment I intend to heed the warning.

Brian
Taxachusetts

[Frank Drew]

One of the things that came across loud and clear from several sources was NEVER to use aromatic wood (like cedar) for racking. The aromatics outgassed by the wood can seep through the corks and ruin the wine!

Natural cork is variable as a seal, but it's believed that most of the gas passage (in both directions) occurs in the interface between the cork and the glass, not through the cork material itself. IMO, oxygen ingress is a much bigger danger to stored wine than any possible contamination from outgassing of volatile aromatics from the racking material, which is, in any case, temporary.

George Matthews' suggestion to ease the edges of the wood to avoid barked knuckles is excellent advice.

The high-ish humidity appropriate for a wine cellar is unlikely to cause structural failure, but it can cause a bit of mold or staining on susceptible woods, like white pine.

[Maurice Ungaro]

Jamie,

I can almost smell and taste the irony all the way

over here on the right cost. Irony, you say?

Yeah, you live in Redwoodcity.

Western red cedar be my choice, take a lookee here.

http://www.stratsplace.com/how_cellralphw.html

Per

What Per said +1

[Tony Bilello]

It will go into a space which is climate-controlled for wine storage. That means the relative humidity will be in the 50%-75% range. ....Anybody have any relevant experience?

For the last 30 years I have lived in Central Arkansas, Missisippi Gulf Coast and Galveston Bay area of Texas. In all 3 of these areas it is rare for the humidity to get that low, except for winter cold fronts bringing in cold dry air. No precautions are taken for furniture or other wood products due to high humidity that I am aware of.

[Michael Drew]

I built my wine cellar racks out of alder. I was looking for something that would have a nice look to it, but be strong and resistant to rot. Alder has all these properties. The cabinet is birch with alder facing and the doors / counter are African mahogany. I keep my cellar set to 55 deg / 50 humidity (the rule of thumb for wine storage is 50/50).

The racks were kind of a pain. There ended up being 1200 or so slats. Then I used galvanized, quarter inch staples to assemble them. The free standing wall rack using sliding DT’s. I also wanted to keep the racks stain / finish free, which they are. The alder has a slight pinkish red color to it after it's milled.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y231/mdrew/Wine%20Celler/20081202-PC024429.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y231/mdrew/Wine%20Celler/20081204-PC044437-1.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y231/mdrew/Wine%20Celler/20081205-PC054446.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y231/mdrew/Wine%20Celler/20090103-P1034629.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y231/mdrew/Wine%20Celler/20100126-P1266164.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y231/mdrew/Wine%20Celler/20100126-P1266162.jpg

[Dave Gaul]

Michael, that is absolutely beautiful!!!!!!!!!!

[Frank Drew]

Nice cellar, Michael; is it below ground, and, if so, do you need much active cooling (you're in Alaska, after all)?

Individual bottle racking is much more of a pain to build but much more user friendly than bin storage when it's time to get a bottle out. One of yours looks like double deep; correct?

[Michael Drew]

Thank’s guys.

The cellar is in my basement. It is a daylight basement. I was very limited with space and wanted to make it efficient as possible, but keep a sink. The racks on the right are double deep. The bins around the cabinet are sized to fit mags and double mags. I deviated from the normal bin size to allow the larger pinot bottles and my Turley’s to fit, and I have some bins that are smaller for regular 750's. It took a lot of experimenting to get the bin sizes just right. Cooling is done by a through wall cooler that is above the entry door. It doesn’t run all the time, but more than I expected it would. I was limited to just how much insulation I could throw at the walls.

I designed and built my home, and this particular space was going to be a sauna. I ended up building the sauna in a different location so I decided to use this space for a second kitchen and had it finished with the exception of cabinets. Then my wine habit outgrew several small coolers, and I decided to turn this space into a small cellar (850 btls). I had to fir out the walls and the ceiling, install a vapor barrier, install 2” high density foam insulation panels and build a floor with 4 inches of insulation as I have radiant floor heat.

A lot more goes into building a cellar than one might think, as I learned when I started researching. The bins, if I would have bought them, would have cost roughly $6,000 (redwood). I think I have about $500 in wood, plus my time. The real cost I’m finding, is this strange desire to fill all the bins. I’m fortunate that I didn’t have room for 2000 bottles or more……….

[Jim Barstow]

When it came time to putting racks up in my wine room, I decided that it was going to be an incredibly tedious project so I opted for a hybrid approach. I bought basic units from http://www.grottocellars.com then trimmed them out myself. I used bent laminations for the curved sections.

Instead of spending days making the same pieces of wood over and over and over I got to concentrate on the details that made it look nice. Then again, my room is for storage, it isn't a "destination".

[Michael Drew]

It wasn’t that bad once I got motivated. I probably have about 50 hours into the racks. Alder is an agreeable wood to work with too, so that helped keep the aggravation to a minimum.

[Frank Drew]

The real cost I’m finding, is this strange desire to fill all the bins. I’m fortunate that I didn’t have room for 2000 bottles or more……….

I coined a phrase once: OCWBD.... Obsessive Compulsive Wine Buying Disorder. Very similar to Tool Buying Disorder.