Strength of Port bottles

[Old Bridge]

In a cellar bin 50cm wide and ca. 100cm tall, with no horisontal shelves. How many bottles can be put on top of another? To the top, ie ca 10?

[MigSU]

I have something similar to what you describe. Mine has 6 rows, each with 9/10 bottles.

But don't worry too much about that. Bottles are often stored in crates like these ones, and these things hold 500-700 bottles, with multiple rows as you can see.

[Old Bridge]

Can you then remove any bottle, or just the top one in each column?

[Alex Bridgeman]

I’ve not broken many Port bottles over the years, but when I have it’s usually because I’ve been removing bottles from a stacked bin without moving the top layers first. The stack is usually stable and can cope with a bottle being slid out from the middle - but sometimes it isn’t with the result that everything suddenly collapses into the hole and one bottle breaks.

There is a way around the problem: use a sheet of thin hardboard / mdf / plywood / thick cardboard between layers of bottles. This effectively creates multiple layers of a single bottle depth. It prevents the bottle stack collapsing into a hole but the weight of the bottles on top might prevent you from removing the bottles in the lower rows.

You should also be aware that bottles are generally slightly tapered, with the shoulders being wider than the base. For a bin which is 4-5 layers deep, this just means that the top layer of bottles lies at an angle of about 30º. With a stack 10 bottles high, you’ll need to take the angle into account. You can do this by layers alternating neck out and base out, or by putting a layer of cardboard across the bottom third of the bottles.

[MigSU]

Can you then remove any bottle, or just the top one in each column?

I never remove a bottle from the middle of a stack. I'm terrified of a collapse.

[Old Bridge]

Thank you both for the clarifications.