WINE WINE CELLARS

ARTICLES ON how to start a wine cellar usually begin by extolling the pleasures of having your own home storage area for wine. Then they discuss the physical requirements for such a repository-unfailingly pointing out that a wine cellar doesn’t have to be in a cellar. Finally, they recommend a “starter set” of wines – usually three or four cases worth of assorted types and vintages – with which to stock the thing.

What you’re now reading isn’t an article on how to start a wine cellar. It’s an article on why you probably don’t need a wine cellar-and on why, if you did need one, you probably wouldn’t want to stock it in the manner usually prescribed.

The idea of wine cellars – places for wine to age undisturbed until ready to drink-is an old one. The ancient Greeks kept their better vintages in special storage rooms, in the tall two-handled jars they called amphorae (often sealed with wax or a film of olive oil). The Romans used amphorae, too, but they also had wooden barrels and glass bottles not terribly different from those we use for wine today. What records we have on the subject indicate that connoisseurship could be extremely precise in classical times: For instance, noted Greek physician Galen, who lived in Rome in the 2nd century A.D., decreed that the Empire’s Sorrentine wine was worthless until it was 25 years old and that the famous Falerian wine was best between the ages of 15 and 20.

During the Middle Ages, the techniques for sealing wine containers were somehow lost -like so many other cultural refinements of earlier times. Suddenly, there were no more wine storage rooms because there was no way to keep wine from spoiling quickly and thus no way to let it age. Wine was sold in barrels for immediate consumption, and bottles were used (if at all) only as carafes.

The bottle made a comeback, though, in the late 17th century, when someone discovered a new, perfect way to seal wine in small containers: with cork, the bark of the cork oak tree of Quercus suber. Thanks to cork, wine could once again be kept from spoiling and could once again be aged. To make things even better, this was also the period in which the good wines of places like Oporto, Bordeaux and Champagne were beginning to emerge in something approximating their modern form. So, as the 18th century dawned, there was not only a new means of preserving wine, but also new wine worth being preserved.

Enter (or reenter) the wine cellar. As the connoisseurs of the 1700s learned more and more about wine and about wine-aging, they noticed that certain physical phenomena seemed to affect their bottles adversely-light, heat, vibration and excessive dryness (which could cause corks to shrivel and crack). Ancients storing wine in amphorae didn’t have these problems-their earthenware jars were impervious to light, and conducted heat much more slowly than glass; house-rattling vehicular traffic on city streets was incomparably lighter, and dryness wouldn’t hurt wax or oil like it would cork-so they had no reason to take their wine underground. But to the 18th-century Frenchman or Englishman, the cellar of the house must have seemed ideal for his precious vintages: It was dark, cool, moist and not likely to shake or wobble.

The romantic idea we tend to have of wine cellars-quiet, cobwebbed caverns filled with bins of rare bottles awaiting the pleasure of some corpulent plutocrat with candle in hand – is largely a reflection of the 19th-century English cellar. More than the French or any other people, the British collected wines from many regions and built traditions around the wines’ aging and enjoyment. They developed a taste for old wines (even old white Burgundies and Champagnes-something few wine-lovers think much of today), and they came to think of their cellars as investments in the future -not financial investments, that is, but kinds of contracts, the terms of which guaranteed them (and their children) an unending supply of enological treasures if they, in return, would but buy those treasures young and nurture them until maturity.

Such arrangements made sense (if you were a wine-lover of at least average means) during the 19th and early 20th centuries. But they don’t make much sense in the Eighties-for several reasons:

– Wine is too expensive today. It is almost axiomatic that the wines that are most worth aging-red Bordeaux and Burgundies, vintage Port, Sauternes, good German Auslese and Trockenbeere-nauslese- are the wines that cost the most to begin with. A mere 10 years ago, you could have started a wine collection with, say, 150 bottles of first- and second-growth Bordeaux from decent vintages at a cost of about $1,000. Today, that amount would get you a case of such wines. Prices in other categories have risen similarly. But these wines will just get more and more expensive, some might argue, so you should buy them now no matter what they cost. The trouble is that as wines appreciate in value, they become too expensive to drink. It takes a brave soul indeed to uncork a bottle that would now cost $500 to $600 on the open market-even if said soul picked it up some years ago for $25. I know plenty of wine collectors who have grown afraid of their priceless bottles-afraid to touch them, much less open them for friends; afraid, at the same time, that their treasures might be going “bad.” Such people often end up selling their bottles or trading them to other collectors for a few cases of California Chardonnay. This is not the purpose of a wine cellar. Besides, how many of us could really afford to stock a good cellar today if we wanted to?

– Wine is no longer made to last. There are some exceptions to this, of course, but in general the new top-quality wine you buy today probably will not live for as many years as the new top-quality wine you (or your parents) might have bought 40 or 50 years ago. Sometime in the late Fifties, makers of both Bordeaux and Burgundy seemed to make a conscious decision to vinify wines lighter so that they would be more pleasant to drink at a younger age (and consequently have less aging potential). Ironically, this new style was encouraged by the fact that people weren’t putting wines away for decades any more, but rather buying them and drinking them almost at once. In responding as they did to this change in the market, winemakers insured that the change would be permanent. And as for those monstrous, inky-black, tannin-rich California red wines – the ones with labels on which the winemaker promises that this masterpiece of his will explode into true glory sometime after 2010-the hard truth is that no one knows how those wines are going to behave with age because no one has been making them long enough. Sure, there have been wonderful old Cabernets, Zinfandels, even Pinot Noirs from wineries like Beaulieu, Inglenook and Krug- wines decades old that have developed great elegance and are still very much alive. But such wines weren’t made in the modern California style, overloaded with fruit, strangled by tannin, thick with extract. How these new wines will react as the years go by is uncertain, regardless of what winemakers say- but I must say that recently I’ve had bottles of big-name Cabernet from such acclaimed vintages as 1968, 1970 and 1974, and have found them to be mostly pretty well worn-out.

– Life isn’t what it used to be. This, to me, is the single most convincing argument against starting a traditional wine cellar. When the English or French of the 19th century laid down wines, they stayed down. Getting moved from place to place, no matter how carefully, affects wine- especially old wine. I’ve had wines in France, resting in cellars at the very places they were made, that should have been un-drinkable swill by now -Chablis and Meursault from the 1880s, Champagne from the turn of the century-but were, instead, surprisingly young and fresh tasting. They hadn’t gone anywhere. How many of us can honestly say, on the other hand, that we won’t be going anywhere? For that matter, how many of us would feel safe laying down cases of wine for our children, as holders of wine cellars used to do, for them to drink upon reaching their own maturity?

Old-fashioned wine cellars still exist, of course-though they’re usually in specially insulated and air-cooled rooms, not in real cellars. And enthusiastic novice wine lovers still start them up. That’s fine for the fortunate few: If you can afford it (both building and properly equipping the cellar itself and buying the wine with which to stock it well); if you’re really committed to keeping up your collection (buying intelligently as good new vintages become available); if you’re really going to use your wine storage space properly (not as a kind of bank vault, but as a constantly changing place to keep wine until it’s ready to drink; and if you honestly believe that you’ve got at least a chance of maintaining some sort of stability in your home life in the coming years-then more power to you. Start a cellar, stock it wisely and enjoy it fully. I envy you.

But, to return to those “how to” magazine articles mentioned earlier, what about the more modest kind of wine cellar, the converted closet or cupboard that almost anyone can afford? I still say, don’t bother. There’s so much wine around today, and there’s going to be more and more-and prices can fluctuate so dramatically (even downward)-that I simply don’t see the point of buying and putting away large quantities of anything. Unless, of course, you can afford to do it right.

And don’t bother with those laundry lists of wine that are so often proposed by the authors of said articles-four bottles of rose, eight bottles of red Burgundy, two bottles of Italian white wine, one bottle of dry white Bordeaux and so on. Buy what you like and need, not according to some abstract quota system designed to give you one from Column A and two from Column B.

Part of the fun of drinking wine is in trying lots of different ones-which usually means buying a bottle or two here and a bottle or two there. And if you drink wine regularly, all you really need to handle what you buy is room for two or three cases of assorted bottles at a time-the floor of a closet, the corner of a workroom, the gap behind a couch. You don’t need a cellar-even a temperature-controlled closet of a “cellar.” Moderate changes in temperature and short-term exposure to light won’t hurt wine. (Just don’t put your bottles next to the stove or on top of the washing machine.) Remember, wine was first placed into dark, moist, cool, stable cellars because it was going to be left there for a decade or two.

I suppose what my argument against wine cellars comes down to is that I believe, in this matter as in much in life, that you should either do it or not do it – and not pussyfoot around in between. If you’re one of those rare people who fit the criteria I sketched out above-money and dedication and some prospects of stability – you should get into this wine cellar business with both feet, if you want to. But no magazine article is going to be able to tell you how to do it; there are professional wine merchants and consultants for that. On the other hand, if you can’t do it right, that time and money might better be spent on just going out and drinking the damned stuff.

Having said that, I must now confess that I haven’t exactly taken my own advice. Although I certainly can’t afford to do it right, I do have a cellar-sort of. I rent it, with a friend of mine, from a market in a Southern California community called Eagle Rock. It’s a large bank of shelves behind a locked door in a cool, dark cinder-block warehouse. I don’t have much more than 20 cases of wine there – mostly good 1966 and ’70 Bordeaux, 1960 and ’63 vintage Port, some older California Petite Sirahs, 1978 Rhone wines and a few odd bottles of no particular distinction, which I’ve put away simply out of curiosity to see how they’ll develop. (To the best of my knowledge, there is no similar wine storage space for rent in Dallas.)

This “cellar” is extremely inconvenient for me to get to, being about 35 miles (and nearly an hour’s drive) from where 1 live. I like it that way. 1 manage about three trips every two years, and 1 always put in at least as many bottles as I take out. The cellar’s inaccessibility forces me to save wines far longer than I would if I had them around the house, and I’m quite pleased with the overall arrangement.

Ah, but the real action in my wine life is centered on a bookshelf in my den: That’s where I keep about two cases, give or take a few bottles, of mostly good, mostly interesting wine-a selection that changes constantly. It’s a ragtag affair, usually including sample bottles sent to me by wineries, things I’ve bought out of curiosity from various wine merchants, gifts from friends and sometimes just good, dependable bottled wines of the sort I like to drink when I don’t have to pay too much attention to how a wine really tastes and smells. Although there are rarely more than 30 bottles resting in this bookshelf, I tend to forget exactly what I have, so there’s usually an element of anticipation and even mild surprise when I go to pick out a bottle or two each evening.

I’m glad I have some slightly older, rather better wines put away somewhere, but I can honestly say that my wine-laden bookshelf probably gives me as much pleasure and keeps me as close (if not closer) to what wine is all about, as any subterranean wine cellar could ever do.

If you already have a wine cellar and are wondering what to buy to replenish it, here are my suggestions:

– Champagne. Three of the last four vintages (including 1981) have been disastrous in the Champagne region, and wine-makers’ stores, even of middling wines for blending, are getting dangerously low. So far, the impact of these poor years hasn’t really been felt in the American Champagne market-but it’s only a matter of time. If you like Champagne and drink it reasonably often, buy it now by the case. The superb 1975 vintage is still in good supply. The super-premiums (Dom Périg-non, Roederer Cristal, Taittinger Blanc de Blancs) are probably more expensive than they deserve to be, but regular 1975 vintages and non-vintage Champagnes from good houses are still affordable. Especially recommended: ’75 Deutz Blanc de Blancs, ’75 Roederer Brut, ’75 Perrier-Jou?t Rosé and, for a good, “everyday” Champagne, Mo?t et Chandon White Star non-vintage.

-Bordeaux. Red. Good ones. Very expensive, but the ’78s and ’79s usually aren’t as high as the ’75s and ’76s were. The advance prices quoted for ’79 Médocs tended to be slightly lower than those for the ’78s, while those for the Pomerols and St-Emil-ions tended to be slightly higher. The catch is that early reports indicate that ’79 Pomerols and St-Emilions are a bit better than the ’78s, while ’79 Médocs aren’t quite as good.

-1978 Rhéne wines. This is admittedly a special interest of mine. I love the big, warm, sometimes very elegant character of good Cote-Rotie, Hermitage and Cha-teauneuf-du-Pape; and the ’78s are the best I’ve had at least since the ’70s-and maybe since the ’61. And prices of Rhone wines haven’t leapt upward as much as those of most French wines. Chapoutier and Jaboulet-Vercherre are reasonable names to look for from the upper Rhone, and Domaine de Mont-Redon and Clos St-Pierre are always trustworthy in Cha-teauneuf-but if you can find wines from small, old-fashioned producers like E. Guigal, Jean-Louis Chave or Emile Champet from the upper Rhone or Henri Brunier from Chateauneuf-well, you’ll really have something extraordinary.

-1977 Port. Simply a beautiful year – big and fruity and full of aging potential. I wrote about these wines in detail in these pages some months ago, but, in general, Port from any of the major houses – Dow, Warre, Smith Woodhouse, Graham, Fon-seca, Sandeman, Taylor Fladgate, Gould Campbell-should be worth keeping.

– Italian red wines. This is a difficult category to get specific about without going into great detail. Suffice it to say that I think Italian reds are too often overlooked when people are stocking their cellars. Personally, I’d be very happy if I had some 10- or 15-year-old Barolos, Barbarescos, Chiantis and Amarones (from good producers, of course) in my cellar.

I haven’t mentioned German wines, Burgundies or Sauternes here-deliberately. In the first case, I don’t think very much of the vintages now on the market – 77, 78 and 79 (though there were certainly some good wines from the last-named) – and recent scandalous revelations about wine forgery in Germany have undermined my confidence in the country’s highly touted wine laws. Burgundies are simply priced out of sight. Oh, if you’re an assiduous shopper with access to the best small producers, you can occasionally find good bottles at the bargain price of $15 to $25. But most of the better red Burgundies from 78 or 79 cost $40, $50, even $100 a bottle-and most of them, sad to report, are rather insipid now and not likely to improve with age. Again, with Sauternes, most of the vintages currently on sale – 77, 78 and sometimes ’79-aren’t very good. They might be okay for current drinking, if you like young Sauternes, but (with the possible exception of the incredibly expensive Chateau d’Yquem) I doubt if they’re worth saving for very long. The 76s, on the other hand, if you can still find them at reasonable prices, should be superb in five to 10 years.