The romance of having your own private wine cellar is hard to beat — and more and more Kiwis are feeling the love.
Kitchen designers report that demand for refrigerated wine cabinets has more than doubled over the past four years, despite price tags of up to $20,000 for top-end units — and you’ll shell out far more of course to build a traditional European-style cellar.
But before you walk down that expensive path, you should carefully consider both the scale and security of your intended collection.
It’s not just about space. Optimal storage conditions are required to ensure a prized vintage or that special bottle you bought to save for your child’s 21st doesn’t end up going down the drain — spoiled by too much fluctuation over time in temperature, light, and humidity.
After 30 years as a professional oenophile and wine auctioneer, Reece has seen it all.
“There’s still no word that adequately captures the heartbreak of someone discovering the sentimental bottle they have just opened, or have brought to us to sell for them, has been ruined.”
When we started monthly wine auction business The Wine Auction Room in 2018, we quickly discovered there was already a market hungry for other specialist wine services, beyond the classic fun of bidding on or selling a hard-to-find bottle or case at auction.
A handful of commercial wine storage lockers for private collectors are dotted around the country, but it was clear there weren’t enough to meet the demand of our grown-up nation of wine-drinkers, so we took the plunge and decided to build the ultimate cellar-for-hire from the ground up in Auckland’s inner-city fringe: the newly opened The Wine Storage Room winestorageroom.co.nz.
The advantages of off-site cellaring make you wonder why anyone would try it at home: not just hospital-grade high-tech temperature, humidity, light, ventilation and vibration control (complete with infrared sensors and back-up systems in case of power disruption to any component), but two-step security and 24-hour access to your own fancy wine vault, in a range of configurations that hold between 1,200 and 6,700 bottles.
So if you want to offload your wine for any reason, we have the auction business to assist you to sell; If you need a professional space to store your private wine collection, we now have this purpose-built vault to meet your need. If you have a trophy collection but is missing one vintage, you can just let us know and we’ll keep our eye out and try and source it on your behalf. We love talking wine, so this is much more than a lock-up space.
Subscribe to our TWSR mailing list today, and then, with our humidity, you’ll only have to deal with bad hair days, not bad wine days.
THE WINE STORAGE ROOM & THE WINE AUCTION ROOM
https://wineauctionroom.com/winestorageroom/