Ideally, the racking should have minimal contact with the floor. In the example above, the only contact the racking system has with the floor are the bottoms of the thin vertical pieces. The lowest horizontal piece is at least an eighth of an inch off the floor.
Two reasons:
- A proper wine cellar is a relatively humid place. We don't want to create places where condensation can be 'trapped'.
- In the life of a cellar, odds are pretty darn good that there will be at least one bottle that leaks or is broken. You don't want that juice trapped beneath a piece of wood adding insult to injury.
Both of these would create a very attractive invitation for mold and rot to form. Not good! Not good at all.
- Jeff Hagen, VinGrotto.com