How to Create a Wine Cellar When You’re Lacking Space at Home

There’s always a solution to create your own wine cellar, even if you don’t have much space at home. A lack of space might seem like an impossible obstacle to overcome, but it’s not! Each project is unique, so Architecture Intérieure du Vin helps to create and fit made-to-measure Wine Spaces at home or elsewhere.

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Solving the Lack of Space in Your Home to Create a Made-to-Measure Wine Cellar

How can you create a wine cellar when you’ve not got enough space at home? First of all, it’s important to check that you definitely can’t free up a little bit of space somewhere. Often, you live in the same layout for years and it’s hard to see another set-up. Sometimes all you need is a good sort-out, a cleverly redesigned layout, and wine furniture that fits into small spaces.

Define Your Wine Cellar Project

Before all else, take the time to think about your goals and what you would use a wine cellar for. Try to define the wine cellar you need today and in the medium to long term. You can solve the lack of space afterwards with a clear and coherent vision.

  • To find out what wine space configuration would suit you best, have a look through our complete guide about the different types of wine cellars. Indeed, a wine cabinet designed to prepare great wines for tasting won’t have the same characteristics as a room for aging bottles.
  • Feel free to browse our comprehensive guide about optimal wine cellar conditions too. This will help you identify the room or area in your house with the best environment for a personal wine space. After all, it would be a shame to make space in an area that’s not suitable for wine.

Have a Sort Out

Now that your wine cellar project is taking form, let’s take a look at how you can find the right space in your house or flat, if possible. If having a wine space is really important to you, sort out your things and get rid of any furniture you don’t need.

Over the years, unnecessary items, empty containers and things that don’t have a place, can easily take over previous square metres. Often, the simple act of tidying up and getting rid of the clutter can solve your space issues to create a private wine cellar at home.

Rethink the Layout of Your Furniture

You’ve sorted and tidied everything up, but you’re still lacking space for a wine cellar. The next step is to look at the layout of your furniture. Before considering any major work, is the layout of your furniture optimal?

Moving a wardrobe, shelf or dresser may be all you need to find that missing bit of space and create your own wine collection at home! Our furniture items are fully modular, so you can start building a little wine cellar in the space that’s available.

Rethink Your Floorspace

If you’ve already optimised the layout of your furniture, you might need to look for a more in-depth solution with your floor plan. Sometimes, moving, adding or removing one or two walls can magically reveal the perfect space for your very own wine cellar. This of course involves a bit of construction work, but if you’re an adept of the art of living wine and passionate about oenology, it will be worth it.

Optimise Your Wine Space With Our Modular Wine Furniture

Our expert craftsmen are aware that space is an issue for a lot of wine lovers. They’ve therefore designed fully modular wine cabinets. Our wine cellar furniture is optimised in length, height and depth, to save space, while securely housing an optimal number of bottles.

With our modular system and help from our Architecture Intérieure du Vin experts, you can fit a made-to-measure wine cellar in your house, even in the smallest spaces or most complicated layouts. To store and display your precious wine bottles, opt for our:

It also depends on your wine space’s function and use. If you don’t have a whole room in which to fit a wine cabinet and tasting counter, you can choose from our carefully designed customisable shelves. Drawing inspiration from our little oak veneer bar, you could make your ideal wine unit with:

By freeing up space in your home, in the right place, you can create your own private wine space along a wall, or in a corner, by combining one or more functions, such as storage, preparation, display and service for in situ tasting sessions. Architecture Intérieure du Vin provides support from the design of your made-to-measure wine cellar, to fitting. Our online wine cellar simulator can provide you with a preview and an estimate for your project.

Sharing a Wine Cellar With Family or Friends

Let’s look at another scenario. Sometimes, there simply isn’t enough room. When you’re lacking space at home and can’t find a solution, why not consider a wine cellar elsewhere? This chapter will discuss a convivial and collaborative solution: creating a shared wine cellar with family or friends!

From Wine-Grower Cooperatives to Cooperative Wine Cellars

A lot of wine-growers work in cooperatives. So, why not group together with people you trust, who you enjoy drinking wine with, and create your own shared wine cellar? If you lack space at home, someone else you know probably has plenty!

Cooperative Wine Cellars or the Art of Sharing a Passion for Wine

The concept of a shared wine cellar is interesting for several reasons. Indeed, this solution is perfectly in line with the spirit of oenology, as it cultivates a certain art of living and sharing wine, that goes beyond a simple storage space for wine bottles.

If one of your good friends or family members has a secure and spacious space, that’s suitable for storing and tasting wine, then a shared wine space could be the solution to your problem. Your shared passion for good wine will only grow stronger!

How to Set Up a Shared Wine Cellar

You may be excited about this idea but concerned about establishing rules to ensure that your shared wine cellar functions properly. What if a dozen wine loving friends want to join in? Don’t panic! Make sure that you only create this shared wine space with people you choose and trust.

Take the time to talk things through, over a glass of wine perhaps. This will help you figure out something that works for you and your way of enjoying wine. Either way, make sure that everyone has their own personal space within the shared wine cellar.

The Golden Rule in a Shared Wine Cellar

Whatever your project, there’s a golden rule that everyone must follow in a shared wine cellar: nobody touches a bottle that doesn’t belong to them without the owner’s consent. If not, you’ll have to consider a more secure solution. But if everyone is in agreement with this basic rule, and that there’s a spirit of trust, then you can begin to create your shared wine space.

Some may want to share a wine cellar because they don’t have the space at home to store their bottles and may not feel the need to socialise. Others may want to be more involved, to organise weekly tasting sessions, offer oenology classes and create a sort of wine connoisseur group. There’s no ‘right’ way to do it, as long as everyone respects each other.

Our Wine Cellar Tools to Organise a Shared Wine Space

Whether in powder-coated steel or solid wood, Architecture Intérieure du Vin’s wine furniture is robust, easy to fit and designed to preserve wine bottles over a long period of time, in the best conditions.

With our modular wine cabinet units, you can compartmentalise and differentiate between several families of bottles by category, terroir, domain, grape variety and vintage, and also separate each owner’s bottles in a shared wine cellar.

L’Atelier du Vin’s wine cellar accessories will also help you organise your bottles, by adding the finishing touches to your wine space:

If you’re also planning tasting sessions with your friends or fellow cellar owners, Architecture Intérieure du Vin has superb wine and champagne counters.

Renting a Private and Secure Wine Cellar From Professionals

There is a third solution to create a wine cellar despite a lack of space at home: renting a private and secure wine cellar in a professional space, specialised in storing each owner’s bottles. This system has several benefits:

  • easier to set up,
  • more secure,
  • the safest in terms of optimal wine storage,
  • and the most flexible if the size of your wine collection changes over time.

Renting a Private Wine Cellar, a Secure and Optimal Solution

This is much more than a storage warehouse or lock-up garage to rent. The idea is to privatise a real professional wine cellar, where each tenant’s bottles are stored separately, in a safe enclosed space. In a secure location, such as industry leaders’ Les Chais de France wine cellar, bottles are stored in optimal conditions in terms of:

  • temperature,
  • humidity,
  • darkness,
  • ventilation,
  • absence of odours and vibrations,
  • positioning of bottles.

Les Chais de France, Our Trusted Partner

When renting a private wine cellar with Les Chais de France, which we have had the pleasure of equipping with wine furniture for many years, you can store your bottles deep underground, beneath the vaults of a large chalk cellar that has been secretly guarded in the south of Paris since the post-war period.

Winegrowers, wine merchants, sommeliers and collectors from all over France still store their finest vintages in these long underground tunnels, because they provide the best conditions for preserving wine.

A Flexible Solution to the Problems of a Wine Cellar at Home

Les Chais de France therefore offers an opportunity to create and privatise a secure wine cellar. You could even share it with your oenophile friends, which would solve any security, bottle preservation or logistics problems of a private wine cellar at home.

You don’t need to worry about the size of your storage space, because you can increase or reduce it over the years, depending on the number of bottles you own. You can also choose Architecture Intérieure du Vin’s furniture to preserve your oenological treasure at Les Chais de France.

A Tasting Cellar at Your Disposal

You can access your private wine space from Monday to Saturday. A wine bar and tasting cellar is also available on site, to open one of your finest bottles. You could organise a tasting session or a small wine event in an exceptional setting.

Les Chais de France: Advice on Creating and Managing Your Wine Collection

As recognised experts in wine conservation, Les Chais de France can advise you on how to build up your wine cellar and manage your living wine heritage over the long term. If you are just starting out, this will help you avoid certain mistakes and unpleasant surprises that could be fatal for your vintages. This valuable advice will enable you to make the right decisions to patiently bring your wines to maturity and make the most of your investment in bottles.