Ash Rajan's Wine-Cellar Dilemma

Granted a wine cellar dilemma is a first world problem. However I am asked all the time the where, how and what of wine cellars. Here is my somewhat convoluted answer but one based on twenty six years of immersion in all things wine.

A fabulous kitchen is likely to be on the top of any dream-home wish list for couples but the media room is usually the male spouse initiated. Enter a new dream. Farewell media room, hello wine cellar. People ask me all the time, where do you build one? The most common answer, basement, is not the best one. Truth be told – and my wife Mariette and my circle of friends would vouch for this – I never called my basement a basement for the sheer scorn of the mediocre implied in the root word “base,” as in basic. The B word was hence banned from the Rajan Family lexicon and substituted with an equally blah proxy, Lower Level.

A naked basement, in my view, is a snake-pit for those bottled beauties. Between the damp, the odors, the creepy crawlies, the vibrating washer–dryer and the monster heat spewing furnace, the basement is a war zone for the demure juice. Yet all my cellars past have been in the lower level. But they were ensconced in dedicated cellar rooms with all the temperature and humidity trappings of an Intensive Care Unit. My last one in Short Hills actually had three micro climates, one each for wines, single-vineyard olive oils and artisanal cheeses, admittedly an over-indulgence and a source of scorn from my humble catholic wife. My bourgeois friends, however, relished the layering. It was not the temperature nuances that charmed them but the mood evocation when visiting each dedicated chamber within chamber of whispering clarets, oils and raw-milk cheeses. Theater my friends, theater as implied in this insensitive nod to Shakespeare’s immortal words, “All the world’s (cellar’s) a stage, And all the men and women (wine, olive oil and cheese) merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, and one man (me) in his time plays many parts…”

So, it’s abundantly clear that boring rack-warehouses that describe most of today’s cellars do little for me. And that ever so predictable motif of wine labels, grapes, vine stencils and wine goblet images splattered over walls, borders and cellar doors has, at least for me, the excitement and allure of an old Ford Pinto. Boooring. Wine barrel furniture recently making the rounds would be the absolute low. I submit that I am snobbish, arrogant and judgmental when it comes to wine and lifestyle. But the rest of my life is humbling to provide the balance.

Cellar design should be brave and theatrical as in taking a former church and re-shaping its stained-glass attic into a cellar, the subdued light in myriad colors adding to the red in those divine glass vessels. The belfry tower would be a tad more dramatic except for the vibrations from the hourly gong. Brave is taking a decommissioned fire-station, poles intact, polka- dotted Dalmations and all to create drama around the wine. That would be a double whammy, especially, for the Peter Pans among us men who never grew up from our fire engine obsessions.

Or, how about a carriage house with stable stalls intact to earmark left and right bank Bordeaux or to distinguish French Burgundy from a Willamette Pinot Noir? Pedigree wines! Get it? Brave is moving a grain silo from a country farmhouse to your McMansion compound and having the wines stacked in a rising spiral fitted internally with an open elevator akin to those used at construction sites to reach for the 1961 Lafite that’s right at the top, where it should be. You are getting the drift, I presume.

The Oceanographic Museum in Monte Carlo, Monaco’s lower level (not basement) viewing room juts into the Mediterranean and the sea’s vibrant creatures are at full view. What a perfect place to put down some inspired whites like Batards and Montrachets and some Paris-tasting bound 1976 Montelenas. Mermaid-magnet guaranteed. Perhaps an abandoned factory or printing press with its resident lathes and hardware painted in red and burgundy to complement your muscular, masculine reds like Barolos, Zinfandel, Bordeaux, Syrah and Chateauneuf du Papes.

My wanderlust has enabled cellar viewings in about four dozen countries around the world. Most have immaculate collections, not to be confused with cellar charisma. Admit, dreaming up “‘out of the box” architectural homes for my wine is a wasteful, indulgent exercise in empty fantasy, rooted in the impractical. But then again we should all be driving Volvos. Should we? Live a little.

And live a little I did, with the magnificent Boscarelli Vino Nobiles. Ancient Etruscan traditions embracing the sunny terrain of nearby Sienna, this Tuscan, like its owner-winemaker, the charming Mr. Ferrari who my wife and I met at a tasting in New York City, embodies the old anThe Vino Nobile Riserva is a lavish opus of sweet-sounding notes, each decibel as clear as a bell. The delineation and the balance is precise. Yet the mouthfeel of the sangiovese is a sensuous kiss for all senses with all the minerality of its alluvial terroir. So dense and complex, it can sleep for a while in that cellar atop the church steeple.

And when you think it’s impossible to top the Riserva, The Sotto Casa Single vineyard explodes in your palette like a hefty left-bank Bordeaux with its sangio, cabernet and merlot blend. Bravo Boscarelli! Their Il Nocio shows off a clay and loam profile and the French Oak’s raw complexity comes through. This one is an ager too. The Boscarelli suite gets a standing ovation in my review egged on by their Olive Oil which is a whisper of their wines’ texture and elegance.

By ASH RAJAN—The writer is a French-certified Maitre Du Vin Du Bordeaux from the Ecole Du Vin in France. While his hobby passion is wine, Ash, a former Wall Street strategist, is currently a V.P. Investments at Janney Montgomery Scott. Contact him at [email protected]