When Sandy Stilwell Youngquist and Tim Youngquist first met, he mentioned his wine cellar. A casual collector, he had no idea his future wife would more than match his enthusiasm—or that his pastime would catalyze an engineering marvel.
After years together and frequent trips to Napa and Sonoma, they had outgrown their Fort Myers home’s 400-bottle cellar. “The wine was stacked up so much you could barely walk,” Sandy recalls.
Something had to give—that something was a guest bedroom. Tim, who owns Youngquist Brothers Inc., a major deep-well drilling company, is used to thinking in torque, weight and load. Collaborating with his engineering team, led by Ravi Ramcharan, he began sketching a system of sliding steel racks to hold thousands of bottles and move on command.
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Photography by Dan Cutrona
Sandy Stilwell Youngquist walking though wine room HOME 2026
Sandy Stilwell Youngquist and Tim Youngquist transformed their guest room into a 6,000-bottle cellar. Five floor-to-ceiling carriages slide on a chain-drive track, locking together to eliminate the need for aisle space.
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Photography by Dan Cutrona
battery-powered screwdriver wine room HOME 2026
He worked through about 15 paper ske-tches and 3D renderings before arriving at the final design: a high-density system of five floor-to-ceiling carriages that lock into each other and slide sideways on command to allow access to a row of wines. The design maximizes space by eliminating the 30-inch aisles found in traditional cellars.
But Tim’s vision posed a challenge: Once loaded, each carriage would weigh 2,446 pounds, far more than the floor could bear. To distribute the weight, they added steel beams and lifts beneath the flooring. Above, racks glide on a system of polished stainless-steel chains and sprockets. Rather than concealing the mechanics, Tim let function inform the aesthetic. White walls match the frame’s powder-coated steel, and modern lighting highlights the interplay of metal and motion. A small pressure dial crowns each carriage, monitoring how the load is distributed to ensure the units glide smoothly along the track.
To access a bottle, they insert a battery-powered screwdriver into a gear socket at the rack’s base, activating a chain drive that slides the structure along its track to open an aisle. Bottles are cataloged by computer and organized by coded location—A-12 means ‘row one, column 12.’
Turning a guest room into a cellar required significant prep. “It needed a lot of insulation,” Sandy says. The team lined and sealed the entire room, added vapor barriers and drainage for condensation, installed a cooling system calibrated for year-round temperature and humidity control, and linked everything to a phone-monitored smart system.
Kept between 52 and 54 degrees, the cellar isn’t a space for lounging. Still, the couple wanted a space to uncork and sample bottles. A high-top table echoes the machinery’s movement, with a crank that lifts a small leaf to expand the surface when friends stop in.
Just outside, a small lounge area with light leather seating and a contemporary fixture from Clive Daniel Home continues the tone of refined utility and creates a purposeful contrast with the home’s Mediterranean-style architecture.
When full, the system holds 6,000 bottles, organized by winery, within its instrumental frame. For a couple who often host up to 150 guests for fundraisers and events, the cellar has become a conversation piece and a love letter to their shared passion. “It’s a precision operation,” Sandy says. “You can see all the mechanics working together—it’s really fun to watch.”
Photography by Dan Cutrona
6,000 bottle wine room HOME 2026
Tim designed the system himself, allowing function to dictate the form. The powder-coated steel frame, exposed gearing and clean white palette give the cellar its disciplined, industrial character.