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Of all the various wine storage systems, the traditional wood and metal racks are as space efficient as any other, barring large bins.

And although always quoted in mm, the dimensions usually translate back to imperial measures, the pitch of racks of standard bottles being either 3 13/16" (96.8mm) or 3 7/8" (98.4mm), depending on the manufacturer, and the metal strips are normally 3/4" wide.

But could more bottles be fitted in if the pitch was reduced?

The actual diameter of regular wine bottles mostly varies between 3 1/64" and 3 15/64" - only the dumpiest bottles exceed 3 1/4". However if you try to reduce the pitch of the rack to nearer that figure, you will get to the situation where the bottles can only be loaded from the bottom up and unloaded from the top down, as without some vertical wriggle room they will otherwise lock each other in.

But although these racks are invariably manufactured with an equidistant vertical and horizontal pitch, I can't see a reason why this should be necessary.

Whilst keeping the same vertical pitch, if the horizontal pitch were reduced to 3 3/8" the space efficiency could be increased by well over 10%. The bottles would sit a little higher on the staves, but they would still be stopped from accidentally sliding out by the metal horizontals.

- Or am I missing something?

Imagine if the entire wine industry moved to square or rectangular bottles instead

Imagine if the entire wine industry moved to square or rectangular bottles instead

If port was bottled in square bottles with rounded corners - similar to Jack Daniels bottles - they could be racked with over 50% better space efficiency.

Unfortunately it would be a different story when bin storing, as bottles need to be round to withstand the weight of those on top of them..

Hexagons, we want hexagons! Hexagonal bottles would also tessellate perfectly (albeit not along the edges), while also not allowing an entire row or stack to slide, as well as fitting better within the hand for pouring.

But no, we don't want really want hexagonal or square bottles; also presumably the air would not be able to circulate as well either, which might or might not lead to different maturity for bottles at the outside of the stack compared to the inside - which might also happen to a much lesser degree with though with a case... this suggests we might need to open several cases, stored in various places with different temperature fluctuations, and determine whether the bottles at the outside of the case differ from those in the middle in a consistent manner...

uncle tom wrote: ↑11:59 Mon 22 Oct 2018

Imagine if the entire wine industry moved to square or rectangular bottles instead

If port was bottled in square bottles with rounded corners - similar to Jack Daniels bottles - they could be racked with over 50% better space efficiency.

Unfortunately it would be a different story when bin storing, as bottles need to be round to withstand the weight of those on top of them..

Wouldn't having diamond shaped bins solve such issue? =)

PhilW wrote: ↑13:46 Mon 22 Oct 2018 Hexagons, we want hexagons! Hexagonal bottles would also tessellate perfectly (albeit not along the edges), while also not allowing an entire row or stack to slide, as well as fitting better within the hand for pouring.

But no, we don't want really want hexagonal or square bottles; also presumably the air would not be able to circulate as well either, which might or might not lead to different maturity for bottles at the outside of the stack compared to the inside - which might also happen to a much lesser degree with though with a case... this suggests we might need to open several cases, stored in various places with different temperature fluctuations, and determine whether the bottles at the outside of the case differ from those in the middle in a consistent manner...

having shipped massive pallets of wine, I can assure you that having that much thermal mass packed together leads to a very even consistency across the entire lot.