Full Circle Wine Barrels

These days it's hard to throw anything away without wincing at all the waste piling up in landfills around the world. Now imagine you're a vintner and year after year you have to dispose of hundreds of wine barrels that age out of use. In California alone 200,000 wine barrels are disposed of every year, and while some are burned as firewood, many more end up in landfills.

Enter woodworker Darryl Hogeback, founder of Savanté Wine Cellars, who has come up with a variety of beautiful and inspired ways to recycle wine barrels by turning them into... what else? Custom wine cellars. His latest line, the Stave Oak collection is made of the reclaimed white oak from retired wine barrels, reports the Los Angeles Times.

"These barrels are made from white oak, so we decided to try re-engineering the staves into wine cellar racks, and our new Stave Oak collection was born," Hogeback tells ."It's such a wonderful way to recycle materials and it's a great conversation piece. We can work with barrels from many different wineries."

Savanté's wine cellars, custom built for private homes or commercial businesses are constructed without the use of nails, staples or screws, using 25 percent less material than other wood systems. The Stave Oak Collection uses all parts of the barrel, including the steel bands that hold the barrels together.

It's not the first time someone's tried to reuse or recycle wine barrels, but it sure beats those wine barrel side tables, right? And we love the self-referential aspect of turning wine barrels into wine racks. That's what we call full circle recycling.

Photo courtesy of Savanté Wine Cellars.