The Physical Evolution of a Personal Wine Cellar
For most of my adult life the idea of actually having a personal wine cellar, beyond a rack in my kitchen or hall closet never really crossed my mind. In my wife and my early days we basically only had enough money to buy the bottle of wine we were going to drink that weekend. Over time we slowly moved from that point to buying two or maybe four of something we really enjoyed, but never ventured beyond that.
Then one day, thanks to Facebook actually, that all changed.
I was enjoying looking through my friends’ posts (in the days when you actually saw your friends posts on your page) and came across one of my old college friends pictured in a beautiful, sun swept spot somewhere in California and he was bottling wine.
I shot off a comment similar to “Looks like a nice gig if you can get it!” My friend responded with “I was helping Keith Webster, a friend of mine, bottle his wine out here in the Napa Valley and it is great stuff!” I took the bait and replied “Hey, can you hook me up?” The rest, as the adage goes, is history!
It wasn’t too long after that chance photo viewing we made our first case purchase. It was of some truly great wine from Webster Cellars in the house. The good news is it was all delicious – Keith’s Left Bank, Right Bank, and Reserve from his 2011 harvest. The bad news was it arrived shortly before Thanksgiving, I didn’t think to hide it, and the entire case vanished over turkey dinner — before I ever got out off the deck from grilling the turkeys!
Soon after that fateful feast I had my first thought of “uh oh! How do I replace that delicious wine, and where am I ever going to keep this new stuff if I do?”
While I wasn’t able to replace that vintage I did continue to wonder where I could keep any wines I might get. Especially since I realized I was now thinking of wines quite different than the wines of my youth (read Boone’s Farm, Lake Erie Pink Catawba, Ripple, et al).
At this point in my life my wife’s battle was raging fiercely so wine was a passing afterthought, if it was any kind of thought at all so I took a hiatus. During these years if we did get an extra bottle of wine it was destined to spend its life on our universal solution of ‘storage’. I use this word loosely because the reality of it is meant “shove the carton in our downstairs”. Any fellow caregiver reading this will understand when I say at the time the mantra of our household was ‘good enough’. Cleaning, organizing, cooking, actually anything and everything outside of patient care were all relegated to ‘good enough’ status. A bit of wine was certainly no exception!
The autumn after my wife lost her decade and a half war I actually had to order a construction dumpster to be delivered and placed in our driveway. I spend days during which it was filled with all the miscellaneous detritus that accumulated during those ‘good enough’ years.
One of the multitude of rooms I found myself cleaning out was an unfinished one in our downstairs. It had originally been designated for use as a future sauna. Below is a shot of what it looked like just before I had to dive in and clean it out.
While spending hours and hours carting out its contents two thoughts occurred to me. First, did I really want a sauna in the house since I’d now lost my favorite sauna partner? The answer to this began to be an obvious ‘no’ so I formulated in my mind a second question. Could I possibly enjoy it more as a wine cellar?
A quick survey of our adult children ensued and the vote, in favor of a wine cellar over a sauna, was unanimous!
My plan came together quickly. It was to do it cheaply, by myself, and adjust as needed in the future while we lived with it. We wanted to see if we really actually needed a wine cellar or not.
HAHAHAHAHA! Of course we did!