Customer Reviews

144 Bottle Black Tie Grid

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Wouldn't you think that the manufacturers of a wine rack would measure the bottles of wine before designing the rack ?
Apparently not, in this case. After purchasing 3 of these racks, I discovered that about 10% of my 200 bottle collection doesn't fit in the grid holes. It was understood that magnums weren't going to fit, which was no big deal. But when over 20 bottles end up sitting on the floor because they are about 1/8" to 1/4" too large in diameter I get a little irritated, especially after paying over $300 including shipping.
The overall quality of the product is average. The racks were not straight along their length and had to be tie-wired together to keep them in alignment.

If you're looking for inexpesive racking for that large capacity cellar you're creating, this is it. If you're looking for a decorative rack for your dining room, look elsewhere.

Think of this as more of a kit than a rack. For the $65 I paid for it, if they only included the 2 plastic coated steel grids it would be well worth the money. You can use these with a few extra pieces of wood to make almost any kind of rack you can imagine. You can use it upright (66" tall) or sideways (29" tall), or with a good pair of bolt cutters, you can cut through the 1/4" rods to make fit odd sized or shaped areas. Again, for the price you aren't losing much if you throw away a few pieces.

It comes with backets to mount it up against a wall, and if you take that approach, the wall is necessary and becomes part of the rack. The brackets place the grids 5.5" apart which is designed to support the straight barrel part of the bottle. The plastic coating on the racks makes them very slippery when in contact with glass bottles, so if the front and rear grids were level, vibration over time might cause the bottles to fall out. Becuase of this, the brackets are designed to hold the front grid about 1/4" higher than the rear grid. This means that the bottles will slide to the back where the wall will stop them. That's why the wall is important!

I put my rack in the basement where I didn't have a wall to mount it to. So I built a couple of wooden ends for it and a few wood braces for the middle to keep the grids at the correct distance. I also placed the grids 7" apart instead of the 5.5" that the brackets dictated, and the front grid is the same height as the rear grid. This allowed me to store the bottles with the bottom of the main barrel resting on the rear grid and the neck resting on the front grid. In this position, part of the bottle hangs below the grid wires so it can't slide forward or backward. It also places the bottles slightly cork-down which some may argue is better or worse than level or slightly cork up.

I used pressure treated wood and stailess steel deck screws to stand up to years in a humid cellar. I used nylon 1/4" cable clamps to attach the grids to the wooden ends. And I just cut some 1/4" slots 7" apart in a few pieces of wood to support the middle and keep the grids at the right distance.

In any case, its a great rack that you can make into just about anything with a few pieces of wood and a couple of hours of work. It won't hold the larger bottles as the previous reviewer mentioned, but I plan to just get a smaller rack to hold the few bottles that won't fit this one. It hard to do better for this price!

Basically, this is the best value in simple wine storage out there. I've got two of these in my "wine cellar" (i.e., temperature/humidity-stable unfinished basement) side-by-side, and they do the job. Where else can you get wine storage for $.50/bottle? Personally, I'd rather spend my money on the wine than the rack, but everyone makes their own choice. They're very easy to assemble, but I always use contractor-grade steel mollies instead of the little plastic drywall inserts they send with it - probably doesn't really matter, but it makes me feel better. Enjoy your wine!