If wines must go with a dinner to make it complete, then wine racks should go with a wine for that exact same reasons. For a bottle of wine in the cupboard or on a shelf, while adequate, appears something of an opportunity missed, an opportunity for excellence.

Indeed, if one is such a gourmand as to care about offering fine wine with a meal, then one should not begrudge the additional expense of wine racks appropriate for one’s collection.

People who serve wine will surely have more than one or two bottles on hand, and because it is important to do something properly, all the way, if it’s to be done at all, it’s essential to store these precious bottles in the time-honored way, as befits their status at the table.

That’s where many go wrong, introducing an element of kitsch into an otherwise good faith attempt at an elegant evening. They pull a bottle out of the fridge instead of a proper wine chiller. Or they serve it warm, straight out of the cupboard – they could have utilized a proper rack, at least.

Besides, wine racks lend an air of elegance to almost any setting, above and beyond what they do for the wine itself. Fine racks are available in a wide range of designs bearing any variety of construction, from fluid cast iron shapes to hand made wooden forms.

They are important accessories for the true connoisseur. Though the word “accessories” usually refers to that which is not vital but only enhance, a wine rack completes the experience as much as correctly serving a bottle does. A rack is to a bottle what candlelight is to the dinner: one might as well dine in the jungle naked, then, over poor roots and berries in the dark and damp!

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