Sapele Hardwood 30 Bottles Wine Rack from Wine Rack Store
✅ Available 27 from October
Sapele: properties
Colour
Sapele is a type of timber whose colour darkens with age. The heartwood deepens to an elegant, rich and magnificent dark reddish-brown. Expect to see an iridescent mixture of light pinks, reds, browns and golds, too.
Grain
Sapele’s grain pattern is close, woven and interlocking — its fibres twist tightly as they grow, aligning in opposite directions. This often produces eye-catching ribbon-like patterns on sawn boards.
It’s also common to find sapele with figuring. These are special markings produced in the wood grain. Fiddleback, quilted, wavy, beeswing, swirl, mottled and pommel figuring can all occur in sapele.
It certainly provides a decorative, sought-after look.
Density
Sapele grows slowly, making it incredibly dense, heavy and scratch resistant, clocking in at a mighty 640kg/m³.
The wood has a Janka hardness score of 6,700 N, greater than genuine mahogany, white oak and teak.
Along with wenge (7,300 N) and zebrano (7,010 N), sapele is one of the strongest woods that is also widely commercially available. It has high resistance to knocks, bending and indentation.
Outdoor durability and stability
Sapele has very good natural resistance to moisture, rot and insects. Sapele’s commendable density also means it’s well suited to withstand knocks, bumps and scrapes that might occur outside.
Sapele’s density, hardness and propensity for straight-grained boles (the trunk centre) make it very stable and predictable throughout its lifespan as a timber product.
Sapele: sustainability
Given their prized physical properties, many populations of African hardwoods have been historically overexploited — that is, depleted faster than they can be replenished. Genuine mahogany, in particular, is at risk of becoming commercially extinct due to illegal logging and unsustainable export levels.
Unlike genuine mahogany, sapele is not listed in the CITES Appendices.

The material is Hardwood
Stores up to 30 Bottles.