I think your desired wine rack is goint to be determined by whether you are a serious wine drinker or not. If wine is more incidental, then there are all sorts of decorative wine racks you can use...but you should locate them so the wine is maintained at a constant, desired temperature, away from light and sunlight. I'm a serious wine drinker and collector, so my wine racks are very practical, and are located in my unfinished basement. Each wine rack holds 110 bottles, and one is dedicated to reds (and almost constantly filled, as reds are my favorite), and the other is dedicated to whites, sparkling wines and champagnes. All of my bottles are labeled with hanging tags so I can more easily review and select the wine to serve. And the wines are kept a constant temps, and away from artificial or sunlight. While not pretty, I love my wine racks because they help me organize my collection, and store it safely. You can purchase wine racks like this from Wine Spectator or any other catalog dedicated to wine accessories. Ideamom, your wine room and wine racks are very nice....

I'm going to link the long thread about spice storage that Sayde was talking about. We have a small kitchen. But we were determined not to commit the mistakes of our past kitchens regarding spice storage. A previous home had the little plastic stair-step shelf (from BB&B) in an upper cabinet. It was OK, but while it made the spices slightly more visible than without the stair-step, it still was jumbled and hard to fumble through. It didn't really allow you to reach quickly in and grab a spice jar while cooking. Worse though, was our pre-reno kitchen with the vertical pull-out spice rack. DH swore that no matter what, that kind of spice pull-out would not be a part of our renovated kitchen. He hated bending to see the spices, the bottles moved around and shifted too much in the pull-out, you had to move from one side around to the other to find your spice, and when the rack was pulled out it impeded traffic in the kitchen. So we looked at Loves2cook4six's solution (see linked thread, 3rd post from the top), that Sayde also mentioned, of bottles in a drawer with labels on the top of the bottles. We also thought of something similar to what Northsong mentioned above. DH nixed that, cause he felt we'd never get around to transferring the spices we buy to the other bottles. So another requirement was that spices stay in their "OEM" bottles. Then we saw Cat_mom's. Eureka! An insert from Rev-a-shelf in a shallow drawer next to the range. The insert holds the bottles at a slant, and everything is instantly visible and accessible. No bending, no squinting, no walking around, no reaching, no moving a bottle to get to another. The insert is a nice wood. And we can keep the spices in their OEM bottles. Although our kitchen is small, we were able to spare a shallow wide drawer dedicated to spices. Eliminating the vertical spice pull-out we had before meant our drawers gained a few more inches. DH comments on how much he loves the spice drawer about once a week. Cat_mom's is pictured on the linked thread about 1/4 the way down. Then Mysterymachine discussed it with Cat_mom in that thread, and installed something similar too. Hers is pictured about a little more than 1/2 way down the thread. There are plenty of other ideas. It's a really great thread. Here is a link that might be useful: Really Great Kitchens Forum Thread about Spice Storage

I think that it's fine for lighter colored wines to be bottled in dark glass. It gives them more protection from damaging sunlight and, as you say, you can always put it in a decanter for people to see the wine. Personally, all of my wines and meads go into dark bottles since I want people to focus on the wine when it's in the drinking glass where it can really shine and be appreciated. Congratulations on the blackberry wine! When it's well done, blackberry is very tasty and the color is beautiful. Fizzy while you're bottling can be a couple of things ... either coming out of the racking tube into the bottle very fast and splashing around inside the bottle (which isn't too bad) or the wine is not done fermenting (which is only good if you're intending on it and using champagne bottles). I'd move one of the bottles to a warm spot for a few days and then open carefully to see if it's settled down or if you're making bombs. A little harsh at bottling time is probably not too much to worry about depending on how long you've bulk aged the wine - a lot of that harshness will hopefully go away with a few months in teh bottle. I've never used screw top bottles with a cork and I haven't seen it recommended. I think it's something to do with the design of the neck on the screw tops and possibly their strength to hold a cork but I don't remember exactly. I haven't bought labels in a long while - I just grab a graphics package like MS-Publisher or Photoshop and create them there. Then I print them on normal paper, cut to size and attach to the bottles with a glue stick. Works well and it's pretty fast if you have a little help. For the vin ordinaire that I just serve at the house for friends, I'm really lazy and just write what's in the bottle using a silver or gold glass marking pen from Staples. I have to get brewing again this weekend - I've just been overwhelmed at the though of racking 15 batches to free up some glass but the thought of starting a mandarin orange metheglin and some cyser in season is getting really exciting. Good luck with your batches.

Well, what often happens is people see things in a magazine or online and then they want it, but they don't take into account that their room isn't the same as the one in the picture, so it's not going to look as good in their space as it did in the photo. In this case, you would need a full wall to make this display work, and you don't have that. And this display would also only work in a closed wine cellar, you also don't have that, you have an open space with windows. I would not try to recreate that display, it is not going to look good in your bar area. But if that's what you're going to do anyway, then stick with what looks best in your inspiration pic and get cheap wine in all the same label. You're not going to drink it so it doesn't matter. Do not used empty, used wine bottles, that's gross. The ONLY way this display works is if they are actual wine bottles.