Argos 12 bottle wooden wine rack

It has been a while since I last wrote a review but I thought I had to share my recent experience…..

Background
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My other half has been 'harping' on about a wine rack for ages and ages, and since we have recently bought a new property I thought it would be the ideal time to treat her to one.

With the clear instructions it must be wooden (containing no metal at all) and it must hold at least 12 bottles I set off to the fine city of Norwich. What a nightmare, I searched around for hours and could not locate a small wooden rack anywhere. There were loads of metal/retro styles but these would not look right in the property.

As a last resort I stumbled in to Argos. I found two wooden racks - one with the capacity to hold 56 bottles and one with the capacity to hold 12. We would never fill the 56 rack so I opted for the smaller one - and for a bargain price of £7.99.

At this price I knew that it was not going to be great but I was sure with a bit of varnish/stain it would be fine.

Assembly
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Opening the box I found 20 large blocks with drilled holes, approx 70 small wooden rods and a plastic bottle with a white label around it labelled 'glue'. The instructions indicated that no tools were required and detailed a series of diagrams. I thought that this was going to be an easy and quick task to put this together.

After much discussion we decided not to stain the wood since it 'matched' the kitchen, so I set to work with the assembly.

First thing I noticed were that there were holes in all the large blocks on all sides. There was no designated 'end' so it was a case of picking up a block, putting some glue in the hole and inserting a wooden rod. No problems…….

Well, a lot of the rods (probably 90%) are a bit too big for the drilled holes. Pushing them in was not an option and a little persuasion was needed. Bring out the hammer. The first row went in a treat and everything looked square.

The second row was easy to construct but when stacking it up on the first row I started encountering problems. Due to having to hit the rods in there were places were the holes no longer matched up. They weren't far out but in order to get them to fit, some of the rods had to be bent out of the way.

Stacking the third row was even more of a mission since the bending of more rods was required. And as some were hit home with the hammer there would be more that popped out. This same pattern occurred in stacking the fourth row.

Piecing the rack together took the best part of two hours. I was pulling my hair out as rods kept popping out as others were hit home. I finally got all the rods to stay in place but the resultant rack looks awful. It is not square and looks all twisted and bent. But that was the only way the thing was going to go together.
Finish
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At £7.99 it's an obvious statement to make that the wood is not the finest oak. And although adequate, I think if it was varnished or stained it would look much nicer.

However, the fact that there are visible holes on the outsides of all the blocks makes it look very tacky and cheap. I don't understand why the manufacturers don't leave designated ends without holes on the outside. I know that these are mass produced and machined so I can't see that this should be an issue.

As for the fact that the rods are too tight for the holes is just ludicrous. I would have thought that as the blocks and rods are machined they should be a perfect fit. Sure, they should be tight and require a little effort to push in by hand, but to require the use of a hammer and quite a bit of force is poor.

Strength
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As all the rods had to be hammered in and are a very tight fit the rack does appear to be quite strong. However, I only have the confidence to put 7 bottles in at any one time. I did try an 8th but as I let go of the bottle it wobbled a bit and some of the rods popped out of their holes.

Value for money
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At £7.99 you can't grumble about the price. Once put up (if you fancy a challenge and like puzzles that are worthy for the Krypton Factor) then the rack is strong enough to hold 6 bottles comfortably. I would not load it up any more than this though.

Conclusion
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After buying one of these, constructing it and using it for approx 2 weeks I must say that I would not recommend it to anyone.

I appreciate you get what you pay for, but the difficult construction, ability to hold around half of it's capacity and very poor finish (even if it is varnished or stained then there would still be loads of visible holes) means that it is just not robust enough to be up to the job.

It would make an ideal xmas or birthday gift to those family members that you only see once in a blue moon - you know second cousin 3 times removed etc.

I found that buying one of these was false economy, as I now need to locate another one. I found the choice of wooden wine racks to be limited so if there are any other Ciao members out there that could point me in the direction of a good quality wooden wine rack, that holds 12 - 24 bottles, then I would be most grateful.