I was very excited to see what the community had to offer for this problem as I am in need of a cardboard box replacement as well.  Unfortunately, it appears that www.cwcrate.com is out of business.  Therefore, I continued to search for a solution.  I found the following sets of plans to make wooden crates:

 - [set 1][1] -- enclosed box: these look really nice, but were beyond my skill level and equipment availability, plus I really wanted a crate that would hold 24 bottles
 
 - [set 2][2] -- plywood based crate for 24 bottles: this is exactly what I was looking for in terms of style, wood cost, size, etc...  However, I do not have a table saw and ripping all that plywood would have been very difficult for me

 - [set 3][3] -- same basic plans as set 2, but made from 1x2 and 1x3 furring strips (i.e. no ripping on a table saw, just cross cuts with a circular or miter saw)

I ended up going with set 3 as they were the right fit me for.  My wife expressed interest in helping so I taught her how to use the power tools and she ended up cutting most of the wood and I assembled them.  We bought enough wood and supplies to make 6 for around $55.  Additionally, we took an idea from [this][4] picture and painted the bottom front rail of each crate with chalkboard paint to provide a place to write some information about what is in the crate.

Here is a picture of finished product.
![enter image description here][5]


  [1]: http://www.instructables.com/id/Wooden-Beer-Bottle-Crate/
  [2]: http://www.instructables.com/id/Plywood-beer-crate/
  [3]: http://www.brewgeeks.com/12oz-beer-crate.html
  [4]: http://cdn.homebrewtalk.com/attachments/f51/71321d1344529346-better-bottle-crate-beer-crate-small.jpg
  [5]: https://i.sstatic.net/w6wJB.jpg