A wine collection can be one of your most valuable possessions, and despite the small size and relative fragility of a single bottle, a large collection can be quite heavy and difficult to move. In order to protect your investment, you need to make sure that your entire wine collection is properly packed before it's moved to prevent any sort of damage while in transit. Thankfully, you can do this yourself with a few simple materials:
What You'll Need
You should get everything together before you start, in order to keep the packing process as painless as possible. You'll need a cardboard divider, several cardboard boxes (the exact number will depend on the size of your collection), bubble wrap or packing paper, a marker, and packing tape. All of these things can be found at most moving and storage supply stores. You may also want to purchase wine stoppers (available at most grocery stores) to seal open bottles that no longer have their caps.
Packing Wine
First things first, you'll want to install the dividers in each box that you'll be packing. Keep in mind that wine bottles will quickly add up in weight, so you won't want to put more than a dozen bottles in each box to keep the weight manageable.
Next, tape the bottom of the box shut and line it with either packing paper or bubble wrap to help protect the base of your bottles.
Make sure that all of the wine bottles that you will be moving are completely sealed and undamaged, and use a wine stopper to properly seal any opened bottles that no longer have their corks. Next, you'll want to wrap each bottle of wine in your collection with either a single layer of bubble wrap or a few layers of packing paper, using the packing tape to secure the layers around the bottle.
Repeat as needed, loading each bottle into a box until the box is full. Then, place a few layers of packing paper or a layer of bubble wrap over the wrapped bottles for extra protection, and close the box, sealing it once again with tape. Mark the box with the direction the bottles are standing in.
Once all of your bottles are packed, you'll want to load them into the moving truck (or have them professionally loaded). Make sure that the boxes are not sitting on top of pieces of furniture where they can shift around and fall over, and that nothing next to them threatens to fall on top of them.
After your wine collection has been moved, you may want to wait a few weeks before you open any of the bottles. The shaking from transit can cause bottle shock, which can ruin the flavor of your wine.
Contact local moving services for more information and assistance.