Storage Solutions for Wine Collectors

Corked bottle? Never again with Yaletown's new wine-storage service

By Christina Burridge

I am a wine hoarder. Which can mean wine spoiler. Most of my wine lives in a condo storeroom where the temperature dips below 10 degrees in the winter and hits over 20 degrees in the summer—a range that kills most of the interesting things in any bottle. Under the bed, at the back of the closet—it’s all over the place, sometimes forgotten and frequently left too long waiting for exactly the right occasion. This summer I swore I wouldn’t buy another bottle of wine until I’d sorted out a place to put it. So I visited Rick Underwood at Vancouver Wine Vault.

Underwood set up the Vault, the first operation of its kind in Western Canada, four years ago to provide managed storage for a core group of collectors—“men, wealthy, 45 to 65,” he explains. Since then, he’s found a whole new generation of collectors in their thirties, women as well as men, and expanded from simply storing wine on site to custom designing wine cellars and selling storage cabinets.

If I’ve got a 10-by-8 space to spare, he’ll work with Winnipeg-based Genuwine Cellars to build me a wine room. Unfortunately, I also need a spare $25,000, although he has done them for as little as $10,000. If that’s outside the budget, he recommends the Eurocave Classic, a glass-fronted, single-temperature, flex-shelved unit that will hold about 200 bottles depending on size, shape, or shelving configuration, and costs just under $5,200. For $2,900, he’ll supply a less fancy “black box” from Eurocave, same capacity, same construction, but with only four sliding shelves. Of course, I could go to Home Depot and buy a wine storage unit for a couple hundred bucks, or get a Sub Zero or a Viking for even more than the Eurocave, but as Underwood explains, these are only fridges—they don’t mimic the conditions of a proper wine cellar and they’re far more expensive to run.

At the Vault, Underwood will pick up the wine, enter it bottle by bottle into his database, bar code it, and store it in a secure, concrete Yaletown basement that’s been wrapped in airfoil, a kind of bubble wrap that locks in moisture to maintain a constant temperature of 14.2 to 14.5 degrees Celsius year round with 65 percent humidity. One phone call and you can pick up a bottle or a case, or Underwood will deliver. The cost? About $3.25 per case per month, including full insurance against loss or damage. So my 10 cases would run about $400 a year.

Underwood developed the idea for the Vault as part of his business degree at UVic. Four years on, he’s building a private cellar for Don Triggs (the Triggs in Jackson-Triggs) in the Vault, and preparing to open up in Edmonton. Most of his business comes by word of mouth, though 1,300 new Yaletown condos across the street certainly helped. He has a customer who stores one bottle with him—a 1908 Niepoort—and others who store 300 cases. Many of his new customers start with only a case or two—often wedding or birthday presents—and build from there. He himself has gone from four cases to 40, mainly from Oregon, South Africa, and Argentina.
My Christmas present to myself will be a Eurocave black box, but I may send Underwood a few cases as well. That way, I’ll be able to see under the bed. Vancouver Wine Vault, 604-805-4725. Winevault.ca.

WORTH THE WAIT

B.C. bottles that are good now, but will become even better with age


CedarCreek Estate Winery 2005 Estate Select Syrah
Gold medal winner at the 2007 Canadian Wine Awards. From a single vineyard in Osoyoos; the wine’s raspberry and blackberry flavours make it drinkable now but wine maker Tom di Bello reckons it’s good to 2012. He suggests hot brownie pudding as a match, preceded by lamb. Available at the winery or private wine stores, $34.99

Osoyoos Larose 2005 Le Grand Vin
French winemaker, French technique, French equipment, but undoubtedly a B.C. wine. A Franco-Canadian venture from a still young Osoyoos vineyard; the star quality of this Bordeaux blend (Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec) grows year by year. Inky black, impressively powerful and savoury with cherry and raspberry fruit and tons of tobacco and leather. Available at private wine stores, $40

Laughing Stock 2005 Portfolio
An investment wine from one of the cult successes on the Naramata Bench. Another B.C. Bordeaux blend that’s in top form with the 2005 vintage thanks to the cocoa and mocha complexity over delicious blackcurrant and raspberry fruit. A wine to hold and profit from a couple of years from now. Available at the winery, $37 —C. Burridge

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