Modern Floating Cable Wine Racks without Extravagant Cost to Vancouver Home

Not all wine cellars are built for avid wine collectors with vast and elaborate storage needs. Many casual wine drinkers appreciate having wine in their home, want it stored correctly and displayed attractively. We installed floating cable racks with a through-the-wall cooling unit in a Vancouver home for these type of customers.

This modern designed wine cellar displays a small wine collection, without the expense that many wine lovers incur. The racks and doors are manufactured and installed by the leading wine cellar builder in the city, giving the owners an enormous value.

Making the Magic Happen

This wine display is toying with two paradoxical intentions.

On the one hand, wine cellars are very pragmatic, stable, and functional systems that create exacting environments for one of the most delicate of substances.

At the same time, this modern design seems to be pushing those austere intentions to their very limits, with wine bottles floating in mid-air and single-pane frameless glass doors enclosing the space for temperature control.

By meeting both the engineering and ethereal objectives, this wine cellar and wine racking exemplifies what the modern design lover expects in their home—a piece of magic as the centrepiece.

Proprietary Modern Wine Racks Only Offered by Blue Grouse Wine Cellars

At Blue Grouse Wine Cellars, we’re very excited to be the owner and sole dealer of the Float Wine Display & Racking System. This high-tension cable method was developed by us with components produced by a local Vancouver manufacturer. Other products on the markets use cables to hang wine bottles, but we use a distinct glass cradle to hold the bottle, making these wine racks one-of-a-kind.

Choose from Multiple Wine Bottle Positioning Options

This system offers a unique flexibility that you don’t often see in other wine racks. Make a choice between label forward or neck forward. You can even set up your rows in creative diagonal formations.

In this project, you’ll notice that there are bottles positioned label forward in the center of the display, with a row of neck forward bottles on the ends. The bottles are spaced liberally, allowing for a small stock of wine. But there is flexibility to install a lot more bottles if needed. Weight is not an issue with these incredibly secure cables.

Add the Float Wine Display & Racking System to a Large Wine Room

In this project, we used the cable racks as the single storage system. But they can also act as a supplementary racking option for high-capacity wine cellars. Often we’ll install large wine rooms with high capacity racking for the vast majority of the clients’ storage needs. Then we’ll add these cable racks as a design feature, adding that extra contemporary touch that so many wine lovers appreciate right now.

Through-the-Wall Cooling Unit Offers Operational and Inexpensive Refrigeration Solution

We used a very popular cooling unit—the KoolR Magnum. This refrigeration system is well-liked for its relatively low-cost compared with more upscale units. It is a simple, self-contained system. It is installed through a header where it transfers air from the inside of the cellar to the dining area outside and vice versa.

You can see the vent for the cooling unit above the glass doors. This simple system is ideal for a wine cellar like this. Larger cellars or those with more glass will require a different, more powerful system.

It’s important to note that you cannot change the grill. We’ve had some clients try to design a custom grill and take off the standard grill. This will affect the airflow. A better option is to paint the grill to customize its appearance. In this case, painting the grill black allowed it to blend in with the dark wall colour and be less noticeable.

Significantly Less Expensive Refrigeration System

As it’s been said, this cooling unit is considerably less expensive than other systems that we usually recommend and install. Other systems can be ten times the cost.

You don’t need a refrigeration contractor to install it. A regular contractor can mount it. There’s a condensate tube that drops into an empty wine bottle at the top of the racking, preventing water from falling onto the floor.

Cost Savings Through the Construction Process

This project was a new residential build, giving the homeowner some significant price advantages. Wine cellars need to be developed with strict insulation requirements to maintain temperature and humidity calculations. Properly insulating can be a large part of the cost of building a wine cellar if it is done in an already finished room where drywall demolition is required.

In this case, the General Contractor added the insulation into the walls of the wine cellar along with the construction of the home. Blue Grouse consulted with the construction company to make sure all was built correctly, making the production cost of the wine cellar’s exterior negligible.

Preparing for the Installation of the Cable Wine Rack System

Because we construct these wine racks with high tension cables, they need reliable, secure backing in the floor and ceiling. We drill in at least ¾ inch. You cannot install these into a drywall ceiling. We planned for this step in the early home building process.

Modern Glass Doors

Along with the racks, we provided the magnificently modern glass doors. We produce them at a fair and competitive price. Built without frames, they tap into the contemporary zeitgeist that is buzzing in the city of Vancouver. Modern wine cellars with these types of doors are growing in popularity.

Contemporary design has always flirted with the impression of the impossible, while remaining rooted in solid mechanical principles. These doors exemplify that ethic, especially in the context of wine storage.

Maintaining Proper Wine Storage Conditions with Contemporary Doors

Wine cellars must be airtight to provide a properly climate-controlled environment. Given that the doors in this project are frameless, the glazier had his work cut out for him. He first had to form the glass to very precise measurements, only allowing for the minutest of gaps around the glass. For most glass doors allowing for a gap, where the smallest amount of air can slip through, would not be the end of the world. But for wine cellars, this is not going to be effective. After producing the glass precisely, the glazier used weather stripping, a mohair hair like material that fills in the minimal gaps.

These doors are never going to be 100% airtight but we do everything possible to minimize the air gaps. Our glazier fully understands wine cellars and the importance of a great seal and fills in any gaps with weather stripping.

Sometimes clients will ask us to use others glaziers because of discount rates that they can get, but in the end, it often doesn’t work out so well. Whoever you choose, that glazier needs to understand the importance of air seals in wine cellars.

This Type of Home Wine Cellar’s Value in Perspective

The clients wanted something that looked impressive but didn’t cost a lot of money. This modern wine display and racking sysem certainly delivered on that objective.

NOTE: This wine cellar was somewhat costly per bottle compared with other wine rooms we’ve built. So, if efficient high-grade, high volume wine storage is your primary goal, we would recommend a different wine cellar strategy.

Add the Magic to Your Modern Vancouver Home by Displaying & Storing Wine Your Way

This wine display demonstrates how a variety of types of customers can enjoy wine cellars. We often build large wine rooms for serious connoisseurs with valuable collections. But there’s also the casual wine drinker who wants to display a small amount of wine in their home in a charming way.

Whether you’re looking for a high-grade wine cellar, or a less-expensive option, working with Vancouver’s most acclaimed wine experts is always a smart decision. We’ll help you with an intelligent design, geared to your budget. In this case, the visual appeal, provided by the modern doors and floating cable wine racks, was the priority for the homeowners. We put most of their budget into those options, while also producing a cellar that supplied sufficient climate-control for their needs. The result is magic.