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FREE Wine Newsletter Natalie MacLean offers a FREE e-mail newsletter that will help you make choices from restaurant wine lists and liquor stores, match wine with food, and chuckle over the lighter side of wine (topics such as embarrassing wine situations and wine scenes in the movies). While she tackles each topic to learn something new, she never takes wine–or herself–too seriously, and writes in a highly entertaining way. I’ve copied a sample below. There are no ads and your e-mail address will be kept confidential. Natalie does this because she enjoys the occasional feedback she receives from those on her list. Natalie’s articles have appeared in the London Times, Chicago Tribune, National Post, Food & Wine, Sydney Morning Herald and Ritz-Carlton Magazine, among others. Her newsletter was named one of the three best wine and food newsletters in North America at the 2003 James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards. Natalie was named the World’s Best Drink Writer at the 2003 World Food Media Awards in Australia. To sign up, visit her web site www.nataliemaclean.com or e-mail her at natdecants@rogers.com.

Wine Cellars
Notes from the underground

November 2002 By Natalie MacLean

“You know we can’t buy that,” I said gently wrenching the bottle of 1996 Chateau Cos d’Estournel from my husband’s grip.“But it’s going to be fantastic in five years… and triple the price,” Andrew pleaded.It needs to be aged and we don’t have the right conditions for it.”

We slouched away from the wine shop as another liquid treasure teased us from the window. Like Amelia Earheart without a plane or Miles Davis without a saxophone, we were wine fans without a cellar. It was time to get serious.

For many people “getting serious” can be triggered by either a number, such as owning more than one hundred bottles, or by an event, such as accidentally sloshing their best bottle of Opus One into the beef bourguignon.

At this point, it’s easy to enkindle a focused passion to build the den of Dionyious. However, we knew we’d never own one of those arching stone subterranean vaults. First, we don’t live in a British manor house and second, we don’t have the budget of an eighteenth-century aristocrat. In fact, our cellar lineage is quite plebeian.

In the spending euphoria of our first jobs after graduating from college, we started buying bottles without baby animals on the label. We laid our precious purchases in separate Styrofoam cartons that had been used to ship mail-order steaks. While we had easily mingled our golf shirts and had blithely shelved our books together, we drew the line at merging our wine collections -- afraid to take that last free fall of intimacy. Things had to change.

Our first improvement was to put the wine in wooden racks in a cool, dark area of the basement. We subsequently discovered that few environments are as potentially destructive to wine as the home, since most basements aren’t temperature-controlled. A consistently cool temperature of ten to fifteen degrees Celcius enables the wine to age slowly to greater complexity. Excess heat cooks off its finer characteristics, while too much chill retards its maturation.

We were also fortunate that the humidity in our basement was relatively stable, at about seventy percent. Too much humidity causes mold, damaging the labels; while too little dries the cork, oxidizing the wine. This is why wine is stored on its side -- to keep the cork wet and the oxygen out. (This also why cellars are often tiled rather than carpeted: carpeting holds mold-inducing moisture.) Darkness is preferable even though wine is bottled in coloured glass to protect it against most of the damage light causes.

To fill our racks, we bought value wines to drink within two to three years, in the $10 to $25 range per bottle from Australia, Chile, Canada and lesser known regions of France, such as Languedoc-Rousillon. For 200 bottles, the racking cost $400 and the wine, which we bought over time, another $3,500.

Our desire to buy and store more wine grew as our school debt shrunk. We considered renting space, but no suitable facility existed in Ottawa at the time. Today, Rolf Thorhauge, owner of Rolf’s Wine Cellars, is in the process of providing cellar space to rent. This is attractive to those living in apartments or those who have recently downsized their living space after children have moved out. Existing facilities in Montreal charge $1.45 per bottle per year, so 200 bottles would run $290. Still, most oenophiles long for a cellar of their own, and for us, the point of a cellar was to have an immediately accessible supply of wines for dinner.

Older basements can be adapted to hold a cellar; people with new homes (especially is they’re building) can make the built-in basement cellar part of their plans. Either way, it’s important to ensure that the room is dark, properly insulated to control the temperature and free from such sources of vibration as furnaces, fridges or heavily trafficked stairs.

Also avoid leaving food, cardboard boxes or paint in the cellar -- unless you like your wine with a varnished finish. The chemicals in these materials break down over time and can seep into the wine through the cork.

The cost of a built-in cellar will vary depending on the size but can start as low as $3,000 for some simple adaptations to an existing basement. (That doesn’t include importing Bordeaux dust for that instant authentic look, of course). Smaller fridge units also work well in a basement, guaranteeing ideal conditions for about 50 to 100 bottles.

But a built-in cellar wasn’t an option for us: our home had no basement, and since it was built on bedrock, digging out a cave would have been exorbitantly expensive. So we turned to stand-alone options. For us, a prefabricated metal unit had as much aesthetic appeal to us as a fridge in our livingroom. We did see some attractive units, ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 or more, depending on the type of wood and accessories. However, we wanted a piece of furniture – low-tech, hand-made and traditional -- that would contrast with our modern lifestyle. It would be an anchor point in our home; something to celebrate the allure and romance of wine: a Chateau d’Yquem for the eyes.

It seemed we had locked ourselves in the cellar of our imagination. Then a friend mentioned Phil Entwhistle as someone who made furniture. He’s a cabinetmaker the way Joe DiMaggio was a baseball player. We asked Phil to make us some sketches. What he proposed was an elaborate eighteenth-century design with motifs symbolizing the bounty of the land and sea. It took hundreds of hours to hand-carve the curling vines, grapes and leaves with threadlike veins. Each column of the cabinet was so finely carved that thousands of chiseled facets produced a multidimensional prism effect when the light hit the surface.

What Phil built was the antithesis of mass produced, assembly furniture. Details included drawers that were cock beaded and dovetailed to fit seamlessly; individually blown glasswork, beveled and leaded to complement the design; ahand-carved, backlit cockleshell crowning the cabinet; and solid brass fittings from Germany.

The internal lattice to hold the bottles was made from 2,000-year-old California redwood trees that can span up to 30 feet in diameter. It’s illegal to cut these trees, so buyers must wait until they fall naturally. Redwood is the best wood for racking wine as it’s naturally odor-free, doesn’t require staining, resists rot and mildew, and is strong relative to it’s weight, so it doesn’t bend easily.

For the outside veneer, a combination of mahogany and the burl from the madrone tree were used. Since burl is an outgrowth on a tree, the design effect is one of spiraling three-dimensional clouds. Unlike commercial mahogany furniture, which is often stained darkly to hide flaws, this piece shows the natural grains of the wood. These will become richer and more textured over time, like the wine we’re aging in it -- both wood and wine tannins, exposed to oxygen, have a slow, natural aging process.

When this stunning cabinet was installed in our livingroom, Andrew and I could think of only one thing: stocking it. Since we had decided that our cellar would be for drinking, not collecting dust, we didn’t focus on trophy wines but rather on wines we knew we’d drink -- from an eclectic mix of wineries, regions and vintages. We decided that phase one of the cellar would hold 300 bottles and we’d add space for up to 1,000 bottles at a later date.

A good cellar creates a flow of great wine over a lifetime. A naturally occurring phenomenon among wine lovers is that purchases expands to fit wine cellar capacity. So it helps to buy wines in a graduated sequence, with some that are ready to drink immediately and others for aging. Although ninety-nine per cent of the world’s wine is meant to be consumed before the next vintage, it’s that other one per cent that cellar owners are fanatic about.

We started with Canadian wines from Niagara and the Oakangan. We’re fans of not only their extravagantly good ice wine, but also of their cabernet franc, riesling and baco noir. Business trips to Silicon Valley took on new pleasure now that we had a wine cellar to fill. Napa and Sonoma Valleys are our long-time favourites from California. Other New World picks included Chilean cabernets, Australian shiraz, Oregon pinot noir and Washington merlot.

What wine collection would be complete without bordeaux and burgundy? We plan to buy classified growths when the price doesn’t require refinancing the house. We’ll also stock up on Rhone syrah, Italian barolo and brunello, sherry and vintage port. (We’ll give our son a case of the latter on his twenty-first birthday.)

Buying wine by the case is always a smart strategy. It enables you to continually sample a wine over the years, charting its development and recognizing when it peaks. There’s nothing sadder than drinking a superb wine, knowing it’s your only bottle.

One of the biggest myths is that only red wines belong in a cellar. In fact, white wines that have a high degree of sweetness, acidity or alcohol can age gracefully for many years, getting smoother and taking on toasty, nutty or honeyed flavours. So we’ll also be stocking up on German riesling, vintage champagne, sauternes, Loire chenin blanc, chablis and late-harvest wines from a number of countries.

It makes financial sense to buy wines upon release when they are cheapest and most available. Even if our goal were to earn a return, we would still buy wines we like. That way, if the market went south, we could drink our liquid assets -- which would dull our financial pain considerably.

We’d also invest in blue-chip wines, those that have long-standing demand. Domaine Rominée-Conti, Antinori, Chateau d’Yquem, Chateau Margaux and Chateau Latour are just some of the Dow Jones Industrials of the wine world. Finding these wines isn’t difficult, however assessing if they’ll continue to increase in value is -- particularly given the recent irrational exuberance in wine prices.

An approach we may try is to buy undiscovered wines we like and bet that they’ll increase in the future. This gives you the bragging rights akin to having paid a $5 cover charge at the local bar to watch Céline Dion before she made it big. Californian cult favourites such as Screaming Eagle, Laurel Glen and Grace Family are examples of wines that have returned up to 1,000 percent in just five years, which beats Microsoft stock hands down. Taking the investment approach to new heights, the musical theatre composer Andrew Lloyd Webber auctioned his 18,000-bottle cellar for US$6.1 million in 1997.

Stocking the cellar is one thing, but drinking and sharing wine is another. Like the turn-of-the-century barons who believed you should give your fortune to charity and die penniless, a friend suggested that our aim should be to die with one great bottle left in the cellar – maybe a magnificent 1945 Chateau Cheval Blanc. It’s all in the timing of course.

In the meantime, we look forward to sharing wine with friends on over convivial dinners, on long winter evenings in front of crackling fires. It’s the social aspect of wine that gives it an edge over other types of collecting. “Come see my coin collection” just doesn’t have the same warmth as “Come share some wine with me.” Take $150 worth of flowers to friends for dinner and they’ll think you’re an extravagant nutter; take a $150 bottle, and you’re a connoisseur who treats friends well.

Our cellar is not about investment, vanity bottles or one upsmanship. It is about celebrating all that wine encompasses: taste, history, science, culture, friendship and intimacy.

$200 - $5,000 WINE RACKS

You don't have to live over an arching cave, or have the budget of an eighteenth-century aristocrat, to cellar wine. You just have to understand the basics of wine storage: temperature, humidity and light.

The proper storage temperature of 10 to 15 oC enables wine to age slowly to its full complexity. Excess heat cooks off its finer characteristics, while too much chill retards its maturation. Humidity should also be stable, at about 70 percent, so that corks don't dry out. When dry, corks shrink slightly, allowing air into the bottles that oxidizes the wine. This is also why bottles are stored on their sides: the wine keeps the cork wet, and the oxygen out. And darkness is preferable, even though most wine is bottled in coloured glass to protect it against most light damage.

So set up racks in a cool, dark area of the house, such as the basement, cold storage room or closet. Basements are often the best places, since concrete heats up and cools down slowly. (But be warned: by the end of each season, accumulated heat or cold in the concrete can still make the conditions less than ideal for long-term wine storage.)

Low-cost racks can be bought prefabricated or in do-it-yourself assembly kits. Materials are usually stainless steel, wire grids and wood. Stainless steel and wire grids, though cheaper, are least desirable since the metal conducts temperature at wider extremes than the bottle, and can cause hot or cold streaks where it touches the bottle.

Softwoods such as Pine and Douglas fir, though more prone to warping, are good, low-cost options - mainly because they're easier to work with, and lighter to ship than hardwoods. But the best racks are those made from more expensive rainforest woods, such as Californian redwood. They absorb moisture with little warping, they're not aromatic and so don't affect the smell of the wine through the cork, and they don't need varnish or finish.

$2,000 - $10,000 WINE FRIDGES

As your collection grows, you can keep assign racks; or you can build a custom cabinet, as we did. We wanted something esthetically pleasing that would blend in with our other furniture, as well as fit oddly-shaped bulkheads. To build custom cabinets, it's best to find a craftsman who's knowledgeable about wine cellar conditions as well a skilled cabinetmaker.

Or you may consider buying a wine fridge, an off-the-rack option that suits anyone who has limited space -- such condo and small-home dwellers. These fridges are temperature and humidity controlled for wine (the kitchen fridge is too cold and isn't humid enough to keep wine long term, wine fridges are specially temperature- and humidity-controlled for wine.

They come in half, full and double sizes, as well as walk-in Brinks-style vaults. They also have a dizzying array of options: metal and wood finishes, grape-motif carving, glass doors, interior lighting and separate compartments to store wine either at aging or serving temperatures.

Since their insulation and cooling systems are equipped to reduce the inside temperature only by about 9-13oC, wine fridges should be installed in a room with an average temperature of 22oC. (Not in a cold basement or hot attic.)

As well, ensure you have enough electrical capacity -- the standard duplex 120-volt receptacle typically used for other large appliances. Avoid plugging the fridge into an octopus of plugs, or your toaster could blow your fridge fuse. Like other appliances, wine fridges sometimes fail -- and if yours does, it won't just be your laundry getting mouldy. Buy a good brand with warranty support (see source guide on page X for brands).

$5,000 - $50,000+ CUSTOM WINE CELLAR

Some wine drinkers retro-fit their existing basements to make them ideal for wine storage, rather than rely on natural conditions. Since renovating your basement, or building a custom cellar, can involve several trades -- electrical work, insulation, carpentry, lighting, engineering, masonry and interior design -- it's advisable to hire an experienced contractor or a cellar consultant.

Greg Ziesmann, director of design and construction services at The Wine Establishment in Toronto, recommends first analyzing your existing basement conditions to identify humidity levels and hot and cold spots, in relation to the ideal range. This will tell you what and how much insulation you need for walls, doors and ceiling; and where it needs to go; and what specialized heating, cooling and humidifying units required. Just as a kitchen fridge doesn't provide the right humidity, a standard air-conditioner is also not suited to long-term wine storage. In fact, a large cellar may even require a dedicated power plant, separate from the main system that heats and cools the home.

The fortunate oenophiles are those who can include a cellar in their plans for a new home: they can insure the proper conditions are created from scratch. In such a case, consider whether you'll use the cellar for storage only, or for entertaining as well. Some collectors like to dine in their cellars, surrounded by bottled history. This not only means a larger cellar, but also more robust heating and cooling units to keep the temperature constant.

High-end cellars can be intoxicating fantasies. The options make the creative juices flow faster than anything Bacchus could pour: mood lighting to evoke a Tuscan sunset, glass-rinsing sinks, antique furniture, limestone floors, carved doors, map drawers to show where the wines originated, and even a sprinkling of imported Bordeaux dust on the bottles for the instant authentic look.

Some collectors like to go high tech with computerized alarm systems that page owners during break-ins or power failure (now not such a remote possibility). Others install high-speed internet connections, to pull up wine reviews from the web when they open a bottle or to send gloating e-mails to absent friends. Some keep online cellar logs that are connected to bar-code scanners, to keep track of what they buy and drink.

THE AGE-OLD QUESTION

Why bother aging wines when 99 percent are made to be consumed the year they're released -- and most are consumed within 17 minutes of getting them home from the liquor store? Well, that one percent makes it all worthwhile - especially for those who prefer to drink, not just stroke, their wines. Mature wines offer exotic flavors and aromas that just aren't found in young wines. (Or in wines priced under $15, and anything that comes in a box or bag - which, according to wine snobs, should be thrown out anyway).

As fine wine ages, the fresh grapey aromas diminish and are replaced by aromas of ripe fruit, cedar, chocolate, leather and others. Meanwhile, tannins -- the compounds (also found in tea) that make your mouth feel furry -- agglomerate, making the wine smoother and easier to drink.

For expensive fine wines, such as classified bordeaux and burgundy; California cult cabernet; vintage champagne; TBA German wine; and super-Tuscans; aging makes economic sense too. After several years, many of these wine double or triple in price, making them the kind of liquid assets you treasure, regardless of the economy.

As well, there's the element of nostalgia: Some parents like to cellar wine made in the year their children were born, so that they can give it to them when the kids turn twenty-one.

STOCKING YOUR CELLAR

A Comfortable Cache: $200 - $2,000

Start with the best values on the market today from New World producers such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Washington. These countries offer delicious wines at reasonable prices in the range of $15 to $35 per bottle. In this range, the wines are not so much for aging, though most will keep for at least one to three years, but for convenience – to pull out a bottle for dinner or to have a few on hand when friends drop over.

Look for riesling, pinot noir, baco noir and ice wines from reputable Niagara producers such as Inniskillin, Henry of Pelham, Cave Spring, Malivore, Vineland Estates and Chateau des Charmes. And from the Oakanagan, try Blue Mountain, Burrowing Owl, Mission Hill, Jackson-Triggs and Sumac Ridge.

The most popular wines in Canada now are from Australia, a country producing blockbuster chardonnay and shiraz. Try those from Penfolds, Xanadu, Chapel Hill, St. Hallet, Rosemount, Wolf Blass, Lindemans and Black Opal. From New Zealand, look for sauvignon blanc and pinot noir from Cloudy Bay, Fairhall Downs, Oyster Bay and Highfield.

Chilean wineries, such as Concha y Torro, Errazuriz, Caliterra, Santa Rita and Santa Carolina, produce solid chardonnay, merlot and cabernet.

Washington try merlot, cabernet and syrah from Chateau Ste Michelle, Columbia Crest, Columbia Winery, L’ecole 41, Woodward Canyon, Hedges and Hogue Cellars.

Cellar Connoisseur: $2,000 - $5,000

Many of the budget-friendly wineries mentioned above also produce premium wines in the range of $35 to $75 per bottle. At this level, wines have greater aging potential, usually at least three to five years, and sometimes longer depending on the producer.

Broaden your search to include California, whose wines have increased in price dramatically over the past five years – something that has been exacerbated by our weak dollar. But the Sunshine State still offers great wines in this range, particularly chardonnays and cabernets from Arrowood, Gallo of Sonoma (not to be confused with the low-end brand E&J Gallo), Sterling, Frog’s Leap, Kenwood and RH Philips.

Also try zinfandel from Cline, Ravenswood, Ridge, Rosenblum and Renwood. Affordable pinot noir from Oregon is worth having on hand: Amity Vineyards, Eyrie, Domain Drouhin Oregon, Erath and Firesteed.

Stock up on Italian amarone, brunellos and barolos from Banfi, Antinori, Masi and Boscaini.

Tawny and vintage ports from Sandeman, Warre’s, Dow and Taylor-Fladgate should also be part of your collection.

The Sky’s the Limit: $5,000+

When price isn’t a concern, go for the heavy-hitters that start at one to two hundred dollars per bottle and go up to thousands of dollars per bottle, especially for mature vintages bought at auction. The challenge in this range is finding the wines since many are on limited allocations, and have people on waiting lists to buy them. Almost all of these require aging to taste their best – at least five years, and some up to ten to fifteen years, or longer.

Start with California cult cabernets, such as Screaming Eagle, Harlan Estate, Grace Family, Pahlmeyer, Cain Five and Opus One.

Then jet across the ocean for top-growth bordeaux, including Haut-Brion, Margaux, Mouton-Rothschild, Lafite, Latour, d’Yquem, Pétrus and Cheval Blanc.

From there, it’s just a Rolls Royce ride away to Burgundy for La Tache, Denis Mortet, Alain Burguet, La Romanée-Conti and Dominique Lafon.

And how about some vintage champagne from Dom Perignon, Krug, Veuve Clicquot and Bollinger. While you’re staying at the villa, don’t forget Italy’s Super-Tuscans such as Sassicaia and Tignanello.

You should also include Australia’s top drop, Penfolds Grange.

Copyright © 2002 by Natalie MacLean. All rights reserved.