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. 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?

7367WineRackPrt4x6-small.jpg 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.

Picture 3.jpgThat 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.

7363WineRackPrt4x6-small.jpg 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

Cheers!

[Ian Abraham]

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

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'

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