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Taste of the good life
Home cellars create space to store
and enjoy wine
by Joan Tupponce
for Virginia Business Options
March
2006
When Mark and Lee Ann Motley entertain
at home, dinner guests are invited to assist in selecting
the evening’s wine. “C’mon, let’s
go pick one out,” Mark tells guests on the way
to the couple’s cozy wine cellar downstairs.
The cellar holds about 450 bottles, and a trip can
produce a Joseph Phelps red from California’s
Napa Valley or, closer to home, a bottle of Octagon
from Virginia’s Barboursville Vineyards.
Motley, president of Motley’s Auction & Realty
Group in Richmond, put his personal stamp on the room,
fitting an inside and outside wall with stone and decorating
with finds from antiquing trips. An elaborately carved,
late 19th century German oak wine cupboard provides
a focal point for wine tasting. The cellar’s
entrance, through a glass door, is set off by a rustic,
Civil War-era iron gate. Just above the door is a pair
of antique swords, crossed at the tips.
The Motleys included plans for a
cellar while designing their new Henrico County home.
They are among a growing
number of families who want a special space just for
wine. “We entertain a lot,” says Mark,
who also invites guests to sit awhile at the authentic
English pub bar around the corner from the wine cellar.
Paul Koder, a wine consultant and
CEO of Wine Trend Inc. — the company that installed the Motley’s
cellar — believes this trend among “buyers
who can afford certain luxuries” is due to a
globalization of the American palette. More and more
Americans are traveling, acquiring tastes for ethnic
foods and wines. “A proper wine paired with the
right food,” he says, “helps to bring out
the best in each, creating a magical moment.”
Koder opened Richmond-based Wine
Trend in 2004 to serve residential, commercial and
corporate clients. Today,
the company also has offices in London and Nice,
France. Born and trained in Europe, Koder learned about
wines
from his father and grandfather, both wine collectors.
He later received culinary arts degrees from Le Cordon
Bleu and The Ritz Escoffier schools in Paris along
with a diploma from the Wine & Spirit Education
Trust in London.
With wine consumption in the U. S.
growing — up
63 percent since 1991 according to the California-based
Wine Institute — Koder expects wine cellaring
to become more prominent in this country than it is
in Europe, where wine has always been part of the culture. “In
Europe,” he says, “wine cellaring is just
for the very wealthy. Many of the cellars are found
in castles.”
In America, wine cellars are becoming
popular in upscale homes, appealing to both oenophiles
(wine lovers) and
serious collectors. JoAnn McHamer, vice president of
sales and marketing for Basheer & Edgemoore, a
northern Virginia homebuilding company, sees many cellars
in the higher-end communities the firm represents. “Some
of them are very elaborate and include a wine tasting
area as well as chilled and non-chilled wine areas,” she
says.
The trend is catching on in Central
Virginia as well. Rich Napier, first vice president
of the Home Builders
Association of Virginia and president of Napier Signature
Homes in Richmond, notes that his company is building
a home for the Richmond Symphony 2006 Design House
that will include a large wine cellar. Napier recently
installed one in his own home. “We always wanted
one,” he confides.
The average wine cellar in the United
States, according to Koder, holds around 1,500 bottles.
Some cellars
can hold up to 5,000 bottles and include such amenities
as a cheese cave and cigar humidor. Other features
range from specialty cabinets to stone walls and custom
doors to elaborate crown molding. Koder’s recent
projects have ranged in price from $25,000 to the upper
end of $50,000. “But the sky is the limit, depending
on materials,” he says.
In many cases, couples opt for a
wine cellar in a second home. John and Diana Jaeger’s passion for wine
prompted them to include a 1,000-bottle cellar, viewable
from the kitchen as well as the dining and family rooms,
in plans for a 6,000-square-foot home they are building
in Ford’s Colony in Williamsburg. John Jaeger,
CEO of YRCI Inc. — a human resources and contract
management consulting firm in Fairfax County — sees
the cellar as a focal point. “We enjoy finding
wines we like,” he says. “[Over the years]
we have become more sensitive to drinking better wines.
We buy an appropriate supply and drink them at the
most optimal time.”
Even though he enjoys wine, John
Hayes, partner at Nixon Peabody LLP in Washington,
never had a wine cellar
in his home until he built a 5,400-square-foot second
home at The Greenbrier Sporting Club on the grounds
of The Greenbrier, a prestigious resort in White Sulphur
Springs, W.Va. Hayes’ 580-bottle cellar, installed
by Wine Trend, is located beneath the house’s
front landing. Four glass doors encase the lighted
cellar. During business travels to California, Hayes
stops by Napa Valley and buys wine by the case. The
new cellar gives him the “opportunity to keep
more wine on hand and to store it properly.”
So serious is Wilson Flohr about
storing his 1,000-bottle wine collection that he positioned
his new home to
face north, so that it would stay cool — the
opposite of what most homeowners do. Flohr, president
and CEO of Richmond Region 2007, explains that he buys
expensive vintage wines that need time to age. (Richmond
Region 2007 is a nonprofit group in charge of the area’s
observance of Virginia’s 400th anniversary.) “European
wines need the time to mature and create the subtleties
that make them wonderful,” he says. Wines stored
at a constant temperature of 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit
(10 to 12 degrees Celsius) will hold their distinctive
flavors and age better than wines exposed to varying
temperatures and light.
Not everyone is as particular as
Flohr. Entrepreneur Dennis Pryor describes his wine
cellar as a “drinking
man’s wine cellar, [perfect] for parties.” A
visit to Pryor’s cellar, just beyond a Gothic
arch on the lower level of Dover Hall, his 30,000-square-foot-plus
mansion in Goochland County, is like entering a subterranean
cave. Built entirely of stone, the cellar is dark,
but inviting. Racks of wine, behind glass doors in
an air-conditioned cellar, face a small, intimate dining
area, dimly illuminated by light sconces that look
like candles. “We entertain in that room a lot,” says
Pryor. “We host large philanthropic functions.
Often, our close friends stay late, and we retreat
to the cellar.”
Even though he and his wife enjoy
wine — mostly
American Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlots — Pryor
says he’s no serious collector, only an enthusiast. “A
lot of people I know,” he says, “do have
expensive wine cellars and huge collections, millions
of dollars of wine.”
Koder dismisses the notion that cellars
are just for collectors. “They are for wine enthusiasts. They’re
part of a lifestyle.” For Flohr, having a cellar
means being able to share a wonderful bottle of wine
and a sumptuous meal with friends. “It’s
one of the great pleasures,” he says. “It’s
a terrific experience.”
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