The Room to Swing a Claret!

The Room to Swing a Claret!

Stephen Williams, Founder and CEO of AWC Fine Wine, writes about the pleasures of a dedicated wine room at home.

Decades ago, consumers of fine wine were more likely to live in an eighteenth century Country Manor or Castle in Europe, however today the modern consumer is more likely to live in a London Town House, a New York Loft or a Hong Kong Skyscraper. Wine has become more accessible and is now enjoyed by much wider social groups and age ranges than ever. Since I founded AWC twenty five years ago I’ve noticed that today more young people are now enjoying to learn about wine, winemakers and critics are able to communicate with their fans and followers directly, and food and wine pairings are becoming commonplace.

Today’s wine consumers are also more intellectually and pleasurably engaged with fine wine than ever before. With this change, the wine cellar has been transformed from a damp and mouldy underground cave, where only the household staff would venture, to a dedicated room within the living and entertaining centre of the home.

Why bother with keeping wine at home?

Firstly, let’s examine some significant pleasures to be had from keeping a well preserved collection of wine at home, rather than buying ad-hoc from the local retailer.

Wine is a living thing that changes and generally improves over time – as the flavour elements of a young wine knit together the maturity process brings about a complexity that simply does not exist in the wines youth. Generally, its only specialist merchants like AWC that offer wines that have already matured for several years, so running around to the liquor store the day before your dinner party is unlikely to be the solution to serving fine wine at home. Fine wines are also generally sold in complete cases, so unless you are going to drink the entire case, then you will need somewhere to store the remaining bottles.

Most wine enthusiasts also gain a lot of pleasure from enjoying wines at different stages of their evolution. Some people might prefer wine when it’s younger and vigorous, while others when the wine has aged to its most elegant and mature stage. Only with a place to store and age wines can you follow this development process so closely.

Here are some of the possibilities, and thoughts that go into planning of the “Ultimate Wine Room”.

Consideration No. 1 – How much space and where?
Cellar-1

The two considerations are how much space is available, and how much space is necessary to store the amount of wine you need. This entirely depends on your consumption profile.
There’s usually a trade-off between space dedicated to the wine room and other potential uses such as a home cinema or gymnasium. One of AWC’s London clients specifically waited until his children had grown to an age where they no longer needed the nursery and play room, and therefore decided to combine the two into a magnificent home cellar. AWC’s bespoke cellar designs typically start at about 25 square metres and can go up to 200 metres, no matter the space available there’s no reason not to have a wine cellar at home.

Consideration No. 2 – How much wine?
Cellar-2

It’s an interesting exercise to calculate how much wine you need to store. Most people are surprised….!

There are some key data drivers that an AWC consultant can use to calculate out exactly how many bottles you need. Try working your way through the following logic:
Daily enjoyment – One bottle of wine with dinner = 365 bottles per year
Dinner party twice per month- 10 guests consuming 12 bottles = 288 bottles per year
Family Occasions (Summer Party/Christmas/Birthday party and other family occasions) – Three events per year consuming 50 bottles per event = 150 bottles per year
Total annual consumption = 803 bottles per year

Consideration No. 3 – Beware; Wine too old to drink?
Cellar-3

It’s astonishing how much wine is left to mature past its point of ideal drinkability, and into steady decline, losing not only its enjoyment but also its value.

Ideally a cellar should contain wines which are maturing and improving, and wines which are in their window of drinkability, but no wines that are in decline. To ensure a continued correct balance, AWC’s experts will provide a periodic cellar appraisal. Surplus wines can be sold off, making room for new purchases of recent vintages ready for maturing. All this information is updated on the clients AWC Cellar Manager i-Pad application, so your cellar catalogue and tasting notes can be accessed remotely.

Back to the question of “How much wine?” – the ideal cellar might have say ten vintages maturing, and another ten vintages to offer a spread of vintages to drink. Now take another look at the required cellar size and the calculation looks like this:

Total Annual Consumption = 803 bottles
Ten year span of maturing vintages = 8,030 bottles
Ten year span of drinking vintages = 8,030 bottles
Ideal cellar quantity 16,060 bottles

Consideration No. 4 – Formats & Giant Bottles?
Cellar-4

Some other questions to be considered are the format (size) of bottles. For those grand dinner parties and special occasions it can make a memorable impression to pull out magnums or Jeroboams, or even one of AWC’s special 18 Litre Melchior formats! Also, if investment is a consideration, then it’s preferable to keep your wine in its original, unopened wooden case which is more appealing on the resale market than individual bottles that have been racked out.

Consideration No. 5 – Temperature and Humidity
Cellar-5

Wine is sensitive to its environment and needs to be kept at around 11 degrees centigrade, and should be maintained at around 75% humidity. This is important to ensure the corks remain moist, if they dry out your top vintages can oxidise and turn to vinegar. Then again, if the humidity is too high then your labels will take on a fur coat of fungus and mould, and whilst this doesn’t harm the wine, it might not be so aesthetically pleasing. For these reasons it’s important that your wine cellar is installed by a specialist cellar constructor and wine merchant working in partnership to create the ultimate cellar environment. This is one of the many bespoke services we offer here at AWC.

Finally some common mistakes;

Filling-up the wine cellar – It may sound a little odd to some, that as your wine merchant, AWC recommends NOT to completely fill-up your cellar. However, I’ve seen so many times that once the cellar construction is finished its owner goes into a buying frenzy. A year or two later, when the next “must have vintage” comes along, there’s not enough space left to store it. We would recommend to initially fill the cellar to about 60% capacity, leaving space for future purchases and enabling you to enjoy the ongoing pleasure of tasting, buying, maturing and enjoying an ongoing variety of great wines and vintages.

Cellar not big enough?
– it’s the most common mistake, so get that right in the first place and enjoy the fruits of your labour.

As part of AWC’s 25th Anniversary celebrations we are delighted to have a significant presence at the prestigious London Masterpiece Art Fair. Taking place at the Royal Hospital Ground in Chelsea from 25 June to 1 July, Masterpiece London has established itself as the must-attend event at the heart of the capital’s busy summer art and social season.

At the fair we will be showcasing our bespoke cellar services, along with some limited edition fine wine collector’s items, and will be offering complementary, one-to-one consultations for those interested in added this unique feature to their homes. Should you wish to attend Masterpiece London with AWC’s & Oracle Capital Group compliments, or would like to organise a consultation then please don’t hesitate to contact us on +44 (0)20 3219 5588 or email info@awc-wine.com

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