Bespoke Wine Racking

Racking sounds like the simplest part of a wine room until you start specifying it properly. Bottle sizes vary, orientation affects how corks and closures age, and the space available rarely divides neatly into a single standard module. We design racking around the bottles you actually keep and the room you actually have, rather than starting from a generic system and hoping it fits.

Orientation is the first decision. Bottles sealed with a natural cork are generally best stored on their side, keeping the cork in contact with the wine so it doesn't dry out; screwcap and some other closures are less fussy about this, which changes how a rack can be laid out. We ask what proportion of your collection falls into each category before settling on a single approach.

Capacity planning is more than counting bottles. We think about how the collection is likely to grow, whether certain wines need to be kept apart for maturation, and how much of the racking should be immediately accessible versus longer-term storage tucked into less convenient positions. A rack that only just fits today's collection tends to feel undersized within a couple of years.

Individual compartments — rather than open honeycomb racking — suit collectors who want each bottle to sit in its own space, protected from the bottles either side and easy to remove without disturbing neighbouring bottles. This costs more in joinery time than open racking, but it earns its keep in collections handled frequently.

Timber and metal both have a place, often in the same room. Timber racking brings warmth and is straightforward to finish to match other joinery in the room; metal racking, in steel or brass-finished sections, gives a more minimal, engineered look and can achieve slimmer profiles for a given capacity. We will talk through which suits your room and how you want it to feel.

Open racking, left without doors or cupboard fronts, treats the collection as something to be seen rather than concealed. This works well combined with lighting, discussed below, and suits rooms where the collection is genuinely part of the room's character rather than simply stored out of the way.

Lighting brings racking to life in a way that flat, unlit shelving cannot. Discreet LED strips along shelf edges or racking uprights pick out labels and bottle shapes without generating heat close to the bottles, and can be run on a low, warm setting that suits a room used mostly in the evening.

Wall-to-wall runs of racking are where careful setting-out earns its keep. We measure the room precisely and design racking to run the full width available, resolving corners, structural columns and any door or window openings so the finished run reads as one continuous piece rather than a series of separate units pushed together.

Presentation matters even in a working storage system. A well laid-out rack, with labels visible and bottles arranged with some logic, makes a collection easier to enjoy as well as easier to manage — which is really the whole point of building it properly in the first place.

Part of our wine rooms & cellars collection