Wine Racks

Where to keep wine, and why it matters

Wine keeps best somewhere cool, dark and steady, and steadiness matters more than cold. A cupboard on an internal wall is better than a kitchen worktop beside the oven, and far better than a windowsill, where sunlight will spoil a bottle in weeks. Vibration is worth avoiding too, so on top of a fridge or a washing machine is not the place. None of this matters much for bottles you will open this month; it matters a great deal for anything kept a year.

Bottles lie down for a reason

A cork needs to stay in contact with the wine to stay swollen and airtight. Stand a corked bottle up for months and the cork dries, shrinks and lets air in. So lie them flat, which is what a rack is for. Screw-capped and sparkling wines are less fussy, though laying them down does no harm and saves space.

Worktop, shelf or floor

A small worktop or shelf rack holds this week's bottles where you can reach them, and is the one most people actually need. A floor-standing rack is furniture, holds considerably more and wants a permanent home. Stackable and modular racks sit between the two: start small, add height later, and keep the footprint you have. Wall-mounted racks free the floor entirely but put the weight on a fixing, so they need to go into something solid rather than plasterboard alone.

Sizing and bottle fit

Count the bottles you actually keep, then allow a little more, since a rack that is always full is a rack you cannot use. Check the aperture as well as the capacity: Burgundy and many sparkling bottles are noticeably fatter than a standard Bordeaux shape and will not go into a tightly sized rack. A modular or stackable design lets you add capacity later.

Materials and placing

Wood is quiet, holds bottles snugly and suits a kitchen or dining room. Metal takes less room for the same capacity and reads as lighter on an open shelf. On a floor-standing rack, check stability when it is part-full and heaviest at one end, and keep it out of a route people walk. A rack on a worktop wants feet that will not mark it.

Think about how you take a bottle out as well as how many go in. A rack that holds bottles neck-first is compact but tells you nothing about what is in it, so labels matter or you are pulling bottles to read them. One that presents the labels takes more room and is far easier to live with. Where a rack sits under a worktop or inside a cupboard, measure the height with a bottle in place rather than the rack alone.

Racks as furniture

A floor-standing rack is a piece of furniture and worth choosing as one. In a dining room it can sit alongside a sideboard and read as intended rather than improvised; in a kitchen it fills the narrow gap that nothing else fits. Keep the top surface of a low rack usable, since it will end up holding glasses whatever you plan. And bear in mind that a rack in a warm kitchen is storage for this month's drinking rather than for anything you are keeping, which is a reason to buy for the room rather than for capacity.