The Auswine Forum

I have offsite storage, so they are all crammed in like Tetris.
Thank god they dont dissapear though when I get them to line up...

Cactus wrote:I have offsite storage, so they are all crammed in like Tetris.
Thank god they dont dissapear though when I get them to line up...

love it... Im pretty much the same, although my latest iteration cellar still has some room in it for the time being, so its a bit better organised than it was

Basically, I have straight half dozens on the bottom of the racks and mixed boxes of random stuff at waist level and above (well that was the theory and then my dad kindly helped me move it all across and so its about 50% set up like that and 50% the wrong way round)

Never found the time to properly organise
I do keep a database of whats in the cellar of course, just not exactly where it is

Cactus wrote:I have offsite storage, so they are all crammed in like Tetris.
Thank god they dont dissapear though when I get them to line up...

+1 here

I just expanded space and went for more expensive smaller 2nd locker, as a larger one would be double deep and even more of a nightmare.

I have a cellar at home and a wine fridge. Once or twice a year I fill the fridge with the drink now stuff so the only time I need to go to the cellar is to get a really special bottle out (like going to an Auswine offline!). Works quite well for me.

Cheers
Ian

Arrange? That would be, ooh, there's a hole, I'll just jamb some in there method.

Different areas in the cellar for reds, whites, red bubbles, stickies and fortifieds

Within each category firstly by vintage, then by maker, then by label or variety.

Makes it reasonably easy to find but the once a year reshuffle can be a back breaker

I've got three shelves at my offsite storage. Bottom shelf is the good long-term stuff - boxed roughly by drinking window.

Middle shelf is is the short/medium term stuff - I've got 4 dozen vertical boxes with the lids off for easy access - a box each for shiraz, cabernet, riesling and other whites.

Top shelf is the overflow - mostly medium term propositions.

Mines more like a large cupboard under the stairs. Does the job and the temperature is pretty stable. Long term ageing wines get buried at the back, stuff I'm planning to drink soon gets put out the front. I rearrange the whole thing about twice a year.

Good question. 95% of the cellar is Australian, so by variety / blend first, then by vintage within each variety - oldest at the bottom.
Six packs or other boxes stacked alongside the single-bottle racks for each variety.

Small international section, by red / white, then by vintage within those two categories. Two other small sections for stickies and ports respectively, each arranged oldest to youngest.

Bit of a higgeldy piggeldy all over the shop method for me, mostlay organised by variety.
Racks in cellar at home - vertical, alphabetical and by variety: Riesling A-Z, Semillon A-Z, Chardonnay, Pinot, Shiraz, Cabernet
Wine fridge - by variety per rack. Top Rack SA Shiraz/blends, second rack Shiraz other, third Cabs, 4th Chardonnay, 5th Pinot etc
Offsite storage - by variety (but really all over the shop), Shiraz/blends in one cage and chardonnay/pinot/cabernet and foreigners in the other.

No organisation for mine, except for keeping odd shaped/sized bottles for the shelves with extra height. I keep an excel spreadsheet of where everything is in each wine cabinet and also how much it would cost to replace today for insurance purposes.

Cheers

Dave

Not very well it seems!

After a big recent re organisation of the cellar with wine stacked 3 meters high on shelving...I came last week to find a potential F*%king disaster.
Dreaded cardboard fatigue.

On the back of Mike H (NYC) recommendations I purchased a mixed 6 of Bollinger LGA.

Only to find all six had plummeted to their deaths on a concrete floor after falling from a stack of boxes nearly 2 metres high...

The wine Gods were smiling....not one casualty!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You bloody bewdy

Cheers
Craig

With great difficulty. I know where the wine is by shelf and layer of shelf - outside of that not much order due to the take and replace.

I try to keep all cases full (dozens) - I then got scared when I had one case that had the bulk of the last of my old wines from 96 and thought if I drop the case I'm screwed mentality. Then went to risk mitigation and preservation strategy - spread it across the boxes which then makes it a back breaking exercise to pluck a bottle from here and there and top up again.

Wake, shuffle, drink, sleep, repeat.

Fortunate enough to have a cellar under the house. One small section for whites, the rest of the racks are red and organized by winery but in no particular order. The rest is boxes stacked up along one side. I try and maintain an excel spread sheet which has various notes and location of each wine. However I am hopeless at updating it and end up having to do a stock take about once a year. Probably time for another update and I may even try and re-organize the racks into a bit more order. A nice job to do in the summer when you need a cool place to hide in.

cheers Gerry

Well, unfortunately I have run out of room in my vintec so have had to resort to the old beer fridge.. Not ideal at all but with these cool temps we are having it is sitting around 14C so does the job. All poorly stacked where-ever

I have mine racked in areas....
McLaren Vale.....mainly shiraz
Barossa...........mainly shiraz
WA................small amount of cab
Vic.................small amount of shiraz
Whites............mainly Hunter semillon
Sparkling shiraz..heaps

Not much organization for my wine.

I basically have three areas in my cellar.
One for drink now / cheap and cheerful,
one for medium term / decent wine.
One for long term / my best stuff.
The long term wine is stored in foam containers stuffed into the back corner of my cellar which is under a concrete stair case with concrete walls and floor, so pretty cool and stable up there.

All up I fit about 120 btls in each section, so it's a fairly manageable size.
No data bases, so occasionally I get some good surprises because I forget what I've put in there.
I did go through and put stickers on all the caps so I could see what they were about a year ago. I must do it again.

Have 2 kitchener double depth fridges, started sorting by state then region with reds and whites stored separately and large formats and 6 packs down the bottom.

Worked okay for a while but as time passed and the diversity of the range increased the system became harder to manage which, in combination with my having the memory span less then my 10 year old son has resulted in a state of cellar anarchy.

The down side is that I often can't find what I am looking for which is often compensated by the fact that conversely I often find stuff I had forgotten I had....

Waiters Friend wrote:Good question. 95% of the cellar is Australian, so by variety / blend first, then by vintage within each variety - oldest at the bottom.
Six packs or other boxes stacked alongside the single-bottle racks for each variety.

Small international section, by red / white, then by vintage within those two categories. Two other small sections for stickies and ports respectively, each arranged oldest to youngest.

Pretty similar to WF although the only difference is that I have different racks for different varietals, then by vintage and finally producer. Fortunately we have a bit of room under the house for a cellar so it is pretty organised most of the year which makes it easy to find the bottle you need!

Back in the day I did sort by drinking date but this can be troublesome as drinking windows tend to be very inaccurate (especially with Aussie reds) as most critics drinking windows tend to be on the short side. Also it depends on the tempeture of storage. So a wine which maybe given year 20XX drink by date, after a few bottles around this date, you may find that the wine is still not ready. Which then means a reorganisation of the cellar! Times this by 20 and you soon give up on sorting by drinking window.

Brucer wrote:Sparkling shiraz..heaps

That's the ticket!!

Cheers

Michael

rossmckay wrote:Arrange? That would be, ooh, there's a hole, I'll just jamb some in there method.

Mine started out neat and tidy and ended up like this. Total chaos but I think I know where most of them are. Well not really...

Carl

Chuck wrote:

rossmckay wrote:Arrange? That would be, ooh, there's a hole, I'll just jamb some in there method.

Mine started out neat and tidy and ended up like this. Total chaos but I think I know where most of them are. Well not really...

Carl

There's a lot to be said for this method. I love those little surprises that pop up every now and then

Underground cellar with lots of racking which is nice. Ordered by producer loosely these days, with a 12 rack upstairs for regular drinking. That gets refreshed regularly!