Last Rites

An old tradition in the British Royal Navy, explained tastefully in an excellent movie “Master Commander, The Far Side Of The World”, regarding last rites when committing comrades to the deep, concerned the sewing of the shroud.

Dead sailor’s bodies (Or what was left of them) were sewn up in their hammocks with a cannon ball (Both convenient and available) before being covered with a flag and dropped over the side of the ship. (The flag remained attached to the ship).

Just in case the comrade might not actually have expired, the sail makers mate would put the last stitch though the nose as a last minute check. This also helped save the rough sewing from unraveling during combat, or in heavy weather.

Even though modern medicine and technology makes this grisly procedure unnecessary, I propose that serious wine collectors be carefully checked prior to final internment. Extracting the absolutely best wine from their cellar, the bottles should be opened and poured upon their remains following careful filtering in the traditional manner. Should this procedure fail to arouse the deceased, the process should be continued for as long a possible, just to be certain.

© Paul Wyatt™ 2007.

Screw Cap Sales Pitch?

“Wine is expected to age at least as long and as well under a screw-cap as it will under natural cork.”
(Paul Gregutt)

EXPECTED TO AGE, NOT WILL...

"It seems to me that it’s time to agree that screw-caps can do the job. Not everyone will like their look and feel (improving rapidly, by the way), but you must agree that these closures have a lot of advantages, the manufacturers are working hard to correct some of the early problems associated with them”.
(Paul Gregutt)

What problems?

Why do we have to agree at all, but especially when there are no long-term studies yet? (Short-term studies have projected a 2% failure rate for screw caps)

What advantages do these closures have? They are possibly cheaper, Easier to use in high speed bottling machines, easier to open…. You said a lot of advantages?

How do we know that we are buying an old style screw cap with problems, or one of the “new and improved” screw caps that have not had long term tests either?

© Paul Wyatt™ 2007

Emergency Ice For New Orleans?

Can this news really be true?

Ice manufactured specially for New Orleans victims after the Katrina event costing millions of dollars but never used, has been stored just in case for more millions, but now "may" be contaminated and must be melted at a cost of four million Dollars.

If they had delivered it in a heap to almost anywhere hot, like Arizona or Las Vegas, it would have kept the place a bit cooler for a while, and melted all by its self.

Alternatively, they could have just turned off the refrigeration equipment....

Smelling the cork...

I am looking forward to seeing someone smelling a screwcap at a restaurant

Smelling the cork again.

When you talked about screw caps in the Seattle Times, I realized that I did not mention them in my blog, but then at the end, you say that you have really only been talking about white wines and will talk about red wines later. If white wine is not fizzy, I really do not care how you seal it.

In the old days, a long time ago, in a far away place.... Wine producers made wine and put their name on the cork. Wine vendors purchased the wine and put their labels on the bottles. The labels said whatever they had to so that the wine would sell because there were no rules. This was before real wine racks because there were no labels or capsules to protect.

Any savvy Englishman would know this of course, so after opening the bottle, would read the name of the real wine producer on the cork. Most wet corks smell like wet corks and for some reason the "reading the producer's name" has turned into the "Sniffing of the cork" at least in America....

The only cork that I ever smelled that was more than this came out of a 1912 Latour at a vertical tasting with dinner at Fleur De Lys in San Francisco. This cork smelled so good that we tasted it too.

The test of a "corked wine" would be to smell the wine which I thought was the first part of the excersize, before drinking it..

I will be looking forward to seeing someone in a restaurant sniffing at a screw cap.

A Great Restaurant...

The private dining room and wine cellar at Brix Restaurant, just North of Yountville in the Napa Valley, is available for special functions. Seating for 10 would be spacious, and there is a rumour about 50 if you like to stand and be friendly.

Brix has a great menu and wine list, incredibly attentive staff, is as close as you can get to eating in the middle of a vineyard with air conditioning, and also has a delightful patio.

Glass Closures.. Corks, Zorks, And Glorks.

Wines with corks (CORKS?) should be stored so that the wine touches the cork and helps to keep it moist....
EXCEPT if you are storing Champagne or sparkling wines for a long time and these must be stored upright. The alcohol will damage the elasticity of the cork that may eventually lead to total loss of gas pressure and at this point, you now have white wine and can store it on its side or just drink it now.
A large, long term study on the effects of storage position in England, and a smaller short term study in France, offered conclusive results, and I am continuing to test old Champagne as often as possible.
Fortified wines such as Sherry, Port, and Madeira should be stored upright because the high alcohol content will also damage the cork.
Wines (and now some sparkling wines) with plastic corks (ZORKS?) or crown caps (KAPPS?) may be stored in any position you want because I do not really care.
Since the relative humidity inside a bottle of wine is always going to be really high, it is possible that having the wine touch the cork in any situation would be unnecessary. This theory may be just another one of those old stories passed down as folklore and finally moot.
Just because a bottle of wine goes bad, it does not mean that the cork dried out from bad storage conditions. How many of these corks have actually been tested immediately, when all we want at the time is a good glass of wine?
Inquiring minds want to know… And now I just pulled an article from the Internet suggesting that the new crown cap closures offered by some manufacturers may expect to cause tainting of the wine at a rate of about 2%. Would it be possible to find out this sort of thing during product development do you think, or is immediate cost reduction more important than actual product quality?
A few producers are now offering a relatively new glass closure with a plastic seal (GLORKS?) that looks very promising. Not only will it probably work as a perfect closure, be relatively economical for the producers, a cool idea that “Special” wine drinkers will accept, and readily removed and re used, it will allow wine, Champagne, and liquor to be stored in any position. Opening and re-sealing the wine will be easy. (An assumption based on purpose because no one has sent me one yet...)
Is it possible that a solution has finally been developed that will allow relative humidity in wine cellars to be based on personal preference? Is it possible that the design of wine racks can finally evolve so that we can read the label? (I am talking about real wine racks here, not wall hangers).

© Paul Wyatt July 7, 2007.

Rubber Bands For Wine...

My cellars successfully tested big earthquakes with millions of bottles in the Bay Area and Los Angeles a few years ago and I recently submitted both my rack system and overhead structural steel supports for full engineering calculations. These are now required under new seismic codes in many cities and counties. It was a surprise to find that these are required for shelving and racking over six feet high, even if not fixed to the structure.

Serious collectors generally want the best quality on the market, and can usually afford anything they want. Tethering all their wine to the racks with little rubber bands would be unlikely, unnecessary, and unsightly. Bolting such a device to racks in a cellar that I had designed and built would be worse than hanging those tacky little plastic labels on the bottles and would probably terminate my lifetime warranty.

More wine is destroyed by failure to consume in a timely manner than all other causes combined. The most common wine storage device is the trunk of a car, which generally prepares the wine for immediate consumption within 24 hours.

© Paul Wyatt™ 2007

A Question About Quality.

I have heard that the quality of recent wine cellars has been awful.

I have not designed or shipped any wine cellars anywhere within the United States since early 2003 and have been rather busy working on some very special projects including a substantial book that will contain a large number of cellar designs and images from my archives.

If you are the unfortunate recipient of a poorly designed and assembled wine cellar that was sold to you by someone using my name, or pretending that I was associated with them, you have been deceived. If I had designed your cellar, I would have shaken your hand and thanked you, either before or after you poured me a special glass of wine.

For twenty five years, I have been dedicated to the goal of achieving absolute quality in design, precision, reliability, and client satisfaction. During this time, I have designed and built thousands of custom wine cellars for very special clients all over the world. I have had personal conversations and, or face to face meetings with every single one of my clients and shared some really good bottles of wine with many of them.

Driven by intellectual curiosity rather than dreams of money and power, there could surely be no pleasure to be found in producing poor quality products for fellow wine collectors. Since I design each project to make a special statement for individual clients, I really enjoy seeing them smile as they walk into their finished cellar and this is one of my rewards.

Alive and well and living in the Napa Valley, I am now available for new and interesting challenges. My new toy is a Mac Pro with four processors, four gigabytes of Ram, a 30" screen, a 22" second screen, and a TeraByte of storage, so now I can work on bigger projects or at least see the small ones better...

© 2007 Paul Wyatt http://www.customcellar.com

7000 bottles completed in 1985. Redwood Rack System.All wine ready to drink...

2500 bottles. Genuine Mahogany Rack System, Black Limestone countertops.

Paul Wyatt

4500 bottles completed in 2003.Jarrah rack system with solid onyx countertops. Designed by Paul Wyatt, Custom Cellar Co.

Thinking About Wine Cellars…..

The number of wine cellars, wine cellar builders, wine cellar catalogs, and just plain articles and books about wine, and wine cellars has been growing by leaps and bounds in the USA, Asia, and Europe. This market has been growing almost as fast as the growth in new wineries, new wines, and new wine regions. My father told me that they are even growing grapes and making wine in England now, something that has not occurred since the Romans left. (Of course these new English wines are probably not much better than those made by the Romans).
Quite a number of books have been published about actually building wine cellars as home projects. They mostly cover the basics of construction, insulation, vapor barriers, and generally clunky wine rack systems in some detail and then go on to talk about collecting and tasting wine. Most of the writers seem to have built their own cellars and then write a book from the experience gained, with photographs taken during construction and while celebrating afterwards.
If you think that a wine cellar is just a special room or refrigerated closet where you keep wine safely until it is ready to drink, and you want someone to tell you how to drink it when it is ready, then any of these books will be adequate for your purposes. You could get started right away, open a bottle to see if it is ready, skip over my convoluted ramblings and just read the good bit at the end.
I would like to get to the drinking of properly aged wine with good friends and special food items in my wine cellar eventually, but I have to ask questions, and these questions often lead to more questions than answers. But why, you might ask?
All of a sudden, I have this compulsion to behave like a small boy and ask the very same question. I will now have to explore a winding road back to the beginning of time to find out. (Perhaps not the beginning of time, but at least to a time when we lived in caves if we were lucky)
Given the choice of living at home and going to the local school, or being packed up and sent to board at a formal English Public school in Winchester for several years, my decision was an easy one. At eleven years old, I was to leave home for the first time, go to a boarding school hundreds of miles away (well not hundreds perhaps, this was in England after all), knowing nothing except that it was a very big change in my life. This somehow seemed more attractive than the certainty of going school with Noddy Hardy, the big guy living up the street, who had promised to get me for some perceived transgression. Perhaps it was for using long words in sentences, but I do not remember.
At this point, I must apologize because I have suddenly perceived endless vistas of paragraph headings and realized that this subject cannot be covered with one bottle, and this one is empty. This was supposed to be a sort of synopsis of a book about wine cellar design that I am writing to package around color plates of wine cellars from my archives but I got stuck last week and really need an editor now.


Please be patient, and I will try and release a chapter or two every now and then... If anyone has any feedback or questions to add to my list, please write.
© Paul Wyatt 2007.

Wine Cellars Are Like Sailing Boats.

Sunday, January 28, 2007


Many serious wine collectors are successful alpha males living very busy lives. They understand that a wine cellar can be far more than just a place to store wine and that a large yacht offers a lot more than simple transportation on water.

Wine cellars and large yachts are similar in many ways. While appearances are very important, both of these creations may be subject to powerful forces that require proper engineering to withstand earthquakes and storms while protecting the valuable contents. They must meet stringent performance requirements, keep the occupants happy and always look good.

During the development of a functional design, considerations regarding structural integrity, strength, and flexibility, are essential when creating an elegant solution. When a client selects a designer for a project, he trusts that the designer will first consider the functional necessities before adding elements that might improve the appearance of the finished product.

Designs for large custom wine cellars in locations that are subject to earthquakes must consider that the masses of wine and glass may move significantly within the cellar. Since the cellar is a container for this mass and is often part of a larger structure that will also move, it is essential to properly engineer its perimeter. It must withstand the stresses exerted by the outside structure, while containing any stresses imposed upon it by the large masses of wine and glass within.

Modern wine rack systems have evolved from an English design that supports each individual bottle while allowing good airflow through the rack. The primary function of this seemingly fragile and flexible rack system is to support the wine properly while allowing each bottle to become part of a large thermal mass linked by continuous airflow. This large thermal mass, contained within an insulated structure, makes it possible to maintain the very stable storage conditions so necessary for the proper aging of wine.

One of the characteristics of this rack design is that the entire mass of wine, glass, racks, and other contents in the cellar becomes a very live load during an earthquake. The flexibility of the rack system allows it to deform and move with the wine, supporting it until the event is over. Repositioning the rack system and repairing a few pieces of laminated trim is readily completed. In cellars with rigid rack systems, the wine will still move by falling out of the rack, or breaking it.

Because the structural integrity of the ideal rack system is the primary design consideration, the shape and dimensions of the cellar perimeter must necessarily determine the rack system layout. The next requirement is to ensure good access to the cellar and each rack space. The capacity of the rack layout and the type of container to be stored, whether it be a single bottle or a wooden case, is not a consideration at this stage and does not require any input regarding the special needs of the client.

The initial primary design or designs may be modified so extensively that they may bear almost no similarity to the original plan while still maintaining some of the functional requirements. Curved corners can become stone pillars, openings and arches may be inserted into the rack system, and racks can be broken up into blocks within stone alcoves. Each departure from the original solution becomes a trade off between form and function.

I have designed and built many thousands of wine cellars for special clients all over the world over a period of twenty-five years. Experienced collectors and new enthusiasts understand that their collections may evolve beyond their existing capacity and I develop suggestions for targets in the various bottle sizes. The primary structural designs are almost always accepted in the same way that the lines of the hull for their new yacht would be accepted.

The cost of a wine cellar is not a factor in the design since the goal is to produce the best possible solution for a client. The value of the proposed design is something that the client must decide for himself. When considering the full cost of the wine, cellar construction, climate control, security systems, and racking systems, we get to large numbers. The differential between low cost wine racks with free designs, and fully developed high quality racks systems that will be admired for generations is not a significant consideration in the market that I serve.

To be successful in any serious sales opportunity one must first have excellent knowledge of the product. From my experience, how you feel in the sale is more important than what you actually say. Remember that you are asking for money in a fair and even exchange for goods leaving both parties satisfied. It will help to remember that it is not your money, it is the client’s money and he must make the decision to buy. If you think that you are asking for too much money, everything will be fine because you will probably not make the sale.

Paul Wyatt.
www.customcellar.com

© Paul Wyatt 2006