Wine Bottle Sizes and the Space They Need
A wine cabinet is not a shelf. It is a set of cradles at a fixed pitch, and the pitch is decided by the widest bottle you own. Get it wrong at the drawing stage and you lose a row in every column.
The four shapes that decide everything
Almost every still wine bottle is 750 ml. What changes is the diameter, and that is what sets the spacing between cradles.
A Bordeaux bottle is the slimmest of the common shapes. A Burgundy bottle is wider and has sloping shoulders, so it needs both more width and more depth. A Champagne bottle is wider again with a thicker glass wall. A Riesling or Mosel bottle is the opposite problem: tall and very slim, so it fits anywhere but needs more headroom.
| Shape | Typical diameter | Typical height | Cradle pitch needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bordeaux | 74 – 76 mm | 290 – 300 mm | 90 mm |
| Burgundy | 77 – 79 mm | 295 – 305 mm | 95 mm |
| Champagne | 86 – 89 mm | 300 – 310 mm | 100 mm |
| Riesling / Mosel | 58 – 62 mm | 300 – 320 mm | 75 mm |
| Magnum (1.5 L) | 95 – 100 mm | 350 – 370 mm | 110 mm |
| Half bottle (375 ml) | 60 – 62 mm | 230 – 240 mm | 75 mm |
What that does to your bottle count
Take a 2,000 mm run at 320 mm deep, single depth. At 90 mm pitch that is 22 columns. Move to 100 mm pitch for Champagne and the same run gives 20 columns. Nothing about the cabinet changed except the spacing, and you lost 9 % of the capacity.
This is why we ask what you actually drink. A cellar built at 90 mm pitch and then filled with Champagne will not take the bottles, and no amount of pushing will fix it.
- Mixed cellar → 95 mm pitch, and label the Champagne rows on the drawing.
- Champagne-led cellar → 100 mm pitch throughout.
- Bordeaux-led, capacity matters → 90 mm pitch.
- Almost all magnums → 110 mm pitch, and accept the capacity drop.
The dimension nobody measures: depth
Cradle depth is not the same as bottle length. A bottle sits in the cradle and the cradle sets back from the door, so a 300 mm bottle needs roughly 340 mm of internal depth once the door, seal and back panel are counted.
On a shallow 260 mm cabinet, bottles are stored neck-out at a slight angle instead. That holds most Bordeaux and Burgundy, but a Champagne bottle does not sit stable neck-out and we will tell you so before the drawing is issued.
How we set it up on a real order
You tell us roughly what you drink and send one photo of your rack today. If there is anything unusual in it — a case of German magnums, a row of dessert wine halves — we measure from that photo rather than from a table.
The cradle pitch then appears on the drawing, row by row. It is the first thing to check when the drawing comes back, before the finish and before the lighting.
The detail behind the text
From this page to a delivered cabinet
- Made in
- Shunde, Foshan, China — frame, finish and assembly in one workshop
- Frame
- 18 mm stainless sightline, folded to the measured wall
- Materials
- Stainless steel, tempered or low-E glass, felt-lined bottle cradle
- Cooling
- Embraco compressor, 110 V / 60 Hz for the US, 220–240 V elsewhere
- Production
- 30 to 40 days after the 50% production deposit, quoted per project
- Delivery
- Crated, collected by your forwarder, with a numbered setting-out drawing
- Installation
- By your fitter, to our drawing; we dry-fit and inspect before crating
The questions that come up before an order
Is a standard 750 ml bottle always the same size?
No. Volume is standard, dimensions are not. Bordeaux is roughly 75 mm across, Champagne about 88 mm, and a Mosel bottle about 60 mm.
Can I change the pitch later?
Not on a welded cradle. Every row is cut to its pitch at the factory, so the decision is made on the drawing and cannot be retrofitted without new cradles.
How many bottles fit in a 600 mm cabinet?
About 6 columns at 90 mm pitch, so roughly 30 bottles across five rows in a 320 mm deep unit. At 100 mm pitch it is 5 columns and 25 bottles.
Send the wall and the bottle count
Three photographs and a tape measure is enough for a scheme, a finish direction and a price. The drawing fee covers the CAD and the visuals.