Stage of Life

• Creating your dream home wine rack represents a different stage than buying your first folding wine rack.George Doyle/Stockbyte/Getty Images
  
  The simple purpose of a wine rack is to hold wine until it's ready to drink. But the range of containers that can accomplish that is vast. Begin with the stage of life at which you find yourself. If you're a student, you might settle for materials that are cheap and easy to move: bricks and board, metal tubing, leather loops, or even bakery rack shelves. Young professional in a small apartment? Go for a space-saving wall fixture or a simple folding rack. Furnishing your first family room? Think about a larger standing rack. Living in your dream home? This might call for semi-built-in wine shelving or a custom storage system.
  
  

Budget Considerations

• Small aparments call for space-saving storage options.Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images
  
  If you've got $50 to spend, it's quite a different budget than $500 or $5,000. Be realistic when envisioning your ideal rack if your budget is small. There may come a day when you can create that teak-and-marble wonder. But unless you're putting in a built-in rack as a future selling point, invest your money in a rack that can move with you. As much as you might want to splurge on materials, balance your expectations. What good is an empty wine rack? Once you own a wine rack, you are going to want to put it to work. Reserve funds to stock your new rack with some starter wines in your price range so you can enjoy it right away.
  
  

Consider Your "Wine Collector Type"

• The classic portable wine rack fits nearly anywhere.Comstock/Comstock/Getty Images
  
  A major decision when adding a wine rack is to identify what kind of collector you may be. Are you a casual social host for whom wine is part of your entertaining style? Or are you a serious or aspiring wine collector? Do you primarily like red wine or white wine? The answers will affect both the size of the rack and and whether you need just a rack or a wine cooler to go with it.
  
  

Rack Construction Specifications

• Make sure your wine rack shelving inclines so the corks remain moist.Hemera Technologies/PhotoObjects.net/Getty Images
  
  Whether you decide to buy a ready-made rack or build one, they share similar attributes. Wine bottles need space around them so they rest quietly and don't get jostled. Your rack should hold the bottles at an incline, not horizontally, which allows the wine to keep the corks moist and tight. Try to assure that the space where the wine rack sits, hangs or fits in your room is out of the sunlight, which can affect wine quality. Wine needs to remain as cool and quiet as possible; collectors even install in-wall cooling systems in built-in units. Other collectors, focused on function rather than form to protect their wine investments, opt for darkness, placing their wine racks in closets or basements.