Where will my next cellar be?
Asks, Ash Rajan, V.P. Investments at Janney Montgomery Scott, a French-certified Maitre Du Vin Du Bordeaux (Master of French Bordeaux), a hobby wine curator and columnist in seventeen newspapers. [email protected]. 908-470-3167
Basement is not a good answer. 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 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. 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!.....Read more......click here.
Love it Ash!