Where to Get Wine Boxes & Crates?

Wine crates are the premier packaging option to store the very best wine bottles made by exceptional vineyards. They're hard to find because so few are made. The only way to get them is by either buying a full case and hoping the original wine crate is included (Expensive), developing a relationship with a high-end retailer (Time consuming) or buying them directly in the open market (Convenient).

The problem with the 1st option; buying a full case, means your going to spend $500+ on the low-end with no guarantee that the wine box or crate will be included. Most of the time the case will be shipped in a cardboard box. The only way to ensure the wooden wine crate is included is by buying directly from the vineyard when you visit. Once you add travel expenses and the headaches of having to bring the wine back home the cost is prohibitive.

The first option is pricey but the 2nd option requires alot of your time. High-end wine retailers buy by the case and often have some wine boxes or crates in stock. They usually use the wine boxes and crates for decoration and/or wine storage racks, so it's unlikely you'll be able to pop in and take a few off they're hands inexpensively. A wine store sells wine not wine crates, so if you buy alot of bottles on a regular basis the manager or owner will be more willing to establish a relationship with you. Once that happens you may be able to get your hands on a few over time.

There are some downsides to this option though. Granted, you may get some wine crates for free (Although you bought alot of bottles, had extra travel costs and spent alot of your time) your going to get the wine crates or boxes that the wine store can't use or doesn't want. This means they're going to be full of stickers, staples, markings, nails and probably damages. Your going to need to spend even more of your time removing these things to make sure the box is looking it's best for your project.

Finally for the 3rd and last option you can buy them directly from a source such as www.winecratesandboxes.com where you simply purchase the amount of crates or boxes you want and their quickly delivered to your door. On top of that they come refurbished without any stickers, staples, nails etc. This means you don't have to deal with any of the prep work. You also have the option of buying them with lids, which is nearly impossible to find anywhere else.

Here's a listing of pages & links to buy wine crates from:

Original wine crates w/o Lids:

Original Wine Crates w/ Lids: 

Wholesale Wine Crate Pallets: 

Wine Boxes w/o Lids:

Wine Boxes w/ Lids: 

Wine Crate Panels:

Chateau Haut-Brion Wine Crate

The revered First Growth vineyard of Chateau Haut-Brion creates the most unique wooden wine crate in Bordeaux. It's far from your standard size and has a honeycomb style insert format to allow for 6 bottles to be on each side as opposed to 6 on the bottom and 6 on the top.

For design  purposes it's most often mixed with the other 4 First Growth crates in a wine room or cellar montage. It can also be used as a side table since it has a good width and length.

Dimensions of a Chateau Haut-Brion wine crate: 21" L X 15" W X 6" H

Personally I like it the way it is and due to it's length and width it's easy to stack other wine crates on top of it as a base.

The branded design on the front is elegant and old world. The winery was purchased by a conglomerate several years ago but they didn't attempt to make any significant changes to the vineyard process at all. They kept the traditional ways intact.

The year of the crate in the picture above is 1982, which is arguably the 20th century's best vintage in Bordeaux. The wine itself is a bit past it's peak, but any lover of Bordeaux wines is familiar with how spectacular this vintage was.

We happen to have a 1982 Haut-Brion in stock! If your interested please let me know. It's priced at $99 plus $11 shipping. It's extremely rare and your not likely to find another anytime soon. The value of it's collectability can't be understated, as all the 1982 First Growth wines were sold out long ago leaving the original wine crates incredibly scarce.

Patrick
www.winecratesandboxes.com
518-475-8625
sales@winecratesandboxes.com

How to Make a Wine Panel Wall

We recently added this DIY post to the Wine Crates and Boxes website. Visit this link to take a look:

How to Build a Wall with Wine Panels

Patrick
www.winecratesandboxes.com
518-475-8625
sales@winecratesandboxes.com

Chateau Latour Wooden Wine Crate

Chateau Latour is my favorite of the 5 First Growth wine crates and I'll tell you why:

• The wine is rare. It's got the smallest production of all the 5 Growths
• Due to the wine being so rare, very few cases are made per vintage making Latour wine crates scarce.
• Investing in Chateau Latour wine has traditionally been a good idea. Because of the small production, rarity and name recognition, buying the wine crate could also be considered an investment.
• I love the design! The lion represents St. Joan of Arc standing on the Castle Rouen. As a history buff I find that fascinating.

*Latour also produces a 2nd and 3rd label that has the tower of Saint Lambert branded on them, This isn't to be confused with the Castle Rouen, 

Most vintages of Latour make a standard-sized wine crate (19 1/2" L X 13" W X 7" H). Since the year 2000 though Latour has been changing the size of their bottles, in-turn making their crates oversized. This is also what's happening at the Mouton Rothschild First Growth vineyard. I'm not sure who started it...

Mild design changes of the Latour logo also happened since the 2000 vintage. The Lion and castle have remained the same more or less for the last few hundred years, but the text style and sizes did get larger.

I once saw a Chatesu Latour wine crate from 1969 with a similar lion and castle. It was gorgeous but had a much more vintage kind of feel to it. I'll try to get a picture at some point so you can see the difference.

My opinion is that if your looking to enhance the design of your home or wine cellar than you can't go wrong with a Latour wine crate from any year. Between the historical value and highly detailed design, it'll surely catch your guests eyes when they enter the room!

At the moment we only have a handful of Latour crates in stock so contact me if your interested in one.

Patrick
sales@winecratesandboxes.com
518-475-8625
www.winecratesandboxes.com

8 Gorgeous Wine Crate Tables

One of the most popular projects to do with wine crates is to make tables with them. There's 3 ways to do it:

• Glue them together (Usually 3 or more)
• Affix the panels to an already-made table and create a table-top
• Add the wine crates as shelves into an already-made table

My personal favorite is the wine panel table-top decoration, but it's also the hardest one to do to. Depending on the size of the table you may need alot of panels to complete it (Approx. 2 panels covers 1 square foot). You may also want to finish the top or place a custom-made piece of glass over it.

If you want to stain or varnish the tabletop, the panels will need to be perfectly straight and pre-sanded so the finish goes on smoothly. The easiest way to do this is to buy the already prepared panels at Wine Crates and Boxes By Clicking on wine panels you can choose how many you need based on your square footage. All of our panels are professionally inspected for straightness and ready for finish. You can start the project the moment they're delivered to your door!

The other two options are a bit easier to do. Making a coffee table for instance can be done by standing four crates together (Brandings facing up) like this one:

Offbeat Home

A custom glass piece was placed on top and it looks beautiful. I've seen projects where they place a centerpiece in the middle of the gap to store wine corks!

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Another example of an elegant yet simple DIY wine crate table project is below:

This is a side table with legs attached to it. One wine crate was glued on top of the other in an uneven fashion to give it an authentic vineyard feel. 

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We now move onto the wine panel tabletops. The next 5 pictures represent a variety of distinctive creations. None are alike in any way.

Alpine Wine Designs

One of my favorite wine table makers is Alpine Wine Designs. The owner Brad is a genius, and the above picture is a Napa inspired tasting table made exclusively with wine panels from high-end California wine crate panels

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Next is a large dining table with 25 panels of assorted sizes and vineyards. This masterpiece took quite a while to make!

Another example of a masterpiece is this remarkable coffee table that has wine panels adorning both the top and legs

The next piece is a side table with only one panel in the center, and it's not a wine panel but rather it's a lid for a an old-style liquor crate. You can easily replace the liquor crate lid with a wine crate lid instead.

The last piece in the wine panel tabletop collection is colorful and somewhat complex to make. Although it's a fairly small deck table, it's covered with panels that were finished with different stains (Cherry, Mahogany and Oak)

 Last but not least is an example of a tasting table that has wine crates as drawers, and wine panels on the top! Love it.

Lumber Jocks

If your looking to create your own unique wine crate project but need the wine crates or panels visit www.winecratesandboxes.com and speak directly with me. We can go over the details of the project, and work out what kind of wine crates or panels would work best for it.

Patrick

sales@winecratesandboxes.com

518-475-8625

Chateau Lafite Rothschild Wooden Wine Crate

Chateau Lafite Rothschild is arguably the most recognized wine in the world. It has a simple yet elegant logo deeply branded on the front side representing the chateau design. Mouton Rothschild as a contrast frequently makes small changes to it's design logo, The Lafite design hasn't changed much at all in the past thousand years.

Although the estate is recorded as making spectacular wines since the early 1200's, it's very likely that vines were planted there well before the Roman Empire. Lafite was purchased by Baron Rothschild in the mid-1800's, and has been part of the Rothschild estate ever since.

The Lafite wine crate is highly collectible even though 20,000 cases are made every year. Half of the cases stay in France, and most of the others are often purchased well before vintage release in the form of futures. This means that investors will scoop up all of the original wooden wine crates complete with wine 2-3 years in advance! Acquiring a Lafite Rothschild crate is very difficult at best.

For every 1,000 wooden wine crates that arrive to us I'd estimate 1 or 2 is a Lafite Rothschild. This is how rare they are.

At the moment we have a few in stock so give me a call or e-mail if you'd like to purchase one.

Patrick
www.winecratesandboxes.com
518-475-8625
sales@winecratesandboxes.com

10 Best Wine Crate Panel Walls

Wine panels are the branded sides of original wine crates with the artwork of the vineyard that made them. Once removed they become like tiles which can be used to decorate walls, floors, ceilings and tabletops.

The most popular wine panel decoration are for walls. The pictures below display wine cellars, wine rooms, bars, dining rooms, kitchen nooks and wainscots with wine panels adorning them all.

The above picture is a unique breakfast nook. There's about 30 panels on the wall and around 10 built into the table - Casaejardim

This is a kitchen wainscot made exclusively from very exclusive Bordeaux vineyards such as Petrus, DRC, Cheval Blanc and First Growth.

Although it looks like a wall it's really a barn door which was kept in a modern home and remodeled. It's got a mixture of wine panels and reclaimed wood finished with lacquer

Ritz Carlton in Dallas did a major remodel of one of their penthouses several years ago. This is a picture of the wine room. Several hundred were needed to cover the walls, and it was done in what looks to be a random pattern but the project was brilliantly planned for.

This is a tall wine panel wall in a wine bar. The entire piece was finished in a honey lacquer. Gorgeous.

Time Out Chicago did a piece on a famous Italian restaurant in Chicago called Davanti Enoteca. This is the wine panel wall in one of their bar rooms. It's theme is a mix of New and Old world vineyards arranged to create a 3D effect.

The above is a modern living room with a 100 square foot wine panel wall. It's got a nice mixture of French, Italian and Napa panels.

Here's another kitchen nook that was featured in Better Homes and Gardens. It's a nice area for wine, and there's about 20 panels in the center wall and 10 on the trim above.

Wainscot wine panel wall for a private bar. Very elegant.

My personal favorite is this one. It's a downstairs kitchen/dining area with the staircase wall covered in about 50 New World wine panels. There's a nice mix of Napa Valley, Spanish and Australian vineyards on the wall.

If your looking to do your own wine panel wall get in touch! We can help you determine how many panels you'll need. We can also assist in choosing the specifics. If your looking for French, Spanish, Italian or Napa Valley panels we can accommodate to a degree based on current stock. Feel free to give me a call  or email and we can talk.

Patrick

sales@winecratesandboxes.com

518-475-8625

www.winecratesandboxes.com