Home Wine Cellar

by Perry Sims and Robert J. Dolezal

Book Overview

Finally, the most informative, fully illustrated, step-by-step guide to designing and building your own home wine cellar This beautifully photographed and illustrated full-color book covers all of the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0762420847
• ISBN13: 9780762420841
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: Running Press Book Publishers
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 2.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 8.7" x 10.9"

Customer Reviews

The Home Wine Cellar

According to his bio, Mr. Sims is a master carpenter who runs a wine cellar construction business based near Sacramento. I was initially concerned that this book was going to serve solely as an advertorial for Mr. Sims' business, and it turned out that this fear was well-founded. However, it was only in so much as that the work Mr. Sims does displays a fine and impressive level of craftsmanship, and that the construction of large-scale wine cellars is not for the average lay crafts-person. Anyone interested in constructing a home cellar should take a look at this guide, but should be forewarned. Afterward it will be hard not to want Mr. Sims to oversee your personal project. The guide starts by taking the reader through the various "hows and whys of wine storage." Much of this information is useful, but fairly basic. The book then leads into various storage options, the pros-and-cons of each option, and how that particular option is constructed. The majority of the explanations are helpful and detailed, while not being overly-complex. The two greatest assets of the guide are the step-by-step DIY instructions (photos included) and the authors awareness that not everyone wants, or is capable of owning, a massive wine cellar. Mr. Sims takes this to heart by providing chapters on installing self-contained (ie. under kitchen counter) storage units, and on tackling space conversions. The information on these conversions is particularly interesting, including how to convert a bookcase, a wardrobe closet, and under-utilized spaces (ie. under a stairwell) to meet specific storage needs. Although the later parts of the book focus on larger-scale construction projects (the kind it might be best to have a professional contractor tackle), the same step-by-step instructions are there for those projects as well. These instructions cover everything from interior-wall vapor barriers to fine finishing options. The only qualms I had with this book were with the content and organization of the final chapter. It strays a bit into auxiliary topics such as wine and food pairings, and has section titles like "The Tasting Ritual," which are not completely relevant to the main thesis. Overall, I give the guide high marks. It is easy to understand and it flows well from chapter to chapter. It is well-organized, all of the photos are high-res, topically relevant and in color, and many of the examples are delightful and inspiring in nature. This is certainly a book I will keep around and refer back to. Although I have yet to personally tackle any of the construction projects in it, eventually I plan to integrate pieces of this publication into some of my other favorite construction ideas in the building of a future home.

The home wine cellar

A perfect book with lots of ideas how to construct and finish a wine cellar. Good pictures and layout. Excelent carpentry.

the best book on the subject

The negative reviews here mystify me. This is a wonderfully illustrated book, that covers the details - such as the requirements for exterior walls - that other books miss.

Beautiful, useful, book. Only two complaints...

This a beautiful, useful book well worth the purchase price. But I bought it to tell me how to build a home wine cellar (which it does) and I was disappointed to discover that it doesn't include any actual floor plan examples, with dimensions, showing a sample layout of a real wine cellar for, say, a small collection, a medium collection or a large collection of bottles. I'm new to this and need suggestions from someone who has done a lot of this. That's what I bought the book for. Also, I would have appreciated some recommendations on brands of cooling equipment and maybe a few names, websites, etc. of different equipment and furnishings the author has found superior to the competition. An appendix listing equipment and furnishing suppliers would have been great, like a recommendation of a good set of prefab racks to buy. In other words, I've read the whole book and still have to design my own floorplan from scratch and still have to spend a lot of time researching websites to decide on the brand/model of cooling equipment I want to use. I suspect the author already knows which is best, and I wish he had told me!