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Wednesday October 6, 2004 - Star Tribune Home & Garden Section
A place to chill To connoisseurs of fine burgundy, a visit to Clos de Vougeot is the ultimate destination. Wine aficionado Tom Meehan sometimes entertains there. Not the renowned French chateau, but the replica he created in the basement of a house he owns on Lake Minnetonka. Like its Gallic namesake, Clos de Vougeot in Orono boasts stained-glass windows, rustic stone walls and a tasting room with a full-wall fresco, hand painted the traditional way using egg yolks and colors made from plants. "We tried to make it as authentic as possible," Meehan said, an effort that included hiding the heating ducts so they wouldn't detract from the medieval European ambience. Meehan, a developer and lighting company owner who summers in Minnesota, built the house to sell, but he poured his passion for wine into its creation, even having his wine group's name, Tastevin, carved into the woodwork. This shrine to wine, which cost more than $1 million to build, may be the Grand Cru of home cellars. But while its size and scope are unusual, its purpose is not. Wine cellars increasingly are a must-have amenity in upper-bracket new homes, as well as a popular remodeling project. "A wine cellar in the 2000s is the same thing that home-entertainment centers were in the '90s, even for people who don't drink," said Jack Farrell, president of Twin Cities wine seller Haskell's and a member of Meehan's wine group. In new homes priced above $1 million, wine cellars are standard features, he said. "It's a selling point, almost de rigueur." Calls to his stores from cellar owners seeking advice about what wines to put in them are up substantially, he said. "Fifteen years ago, a call on wine cellars was kind of unusual. Now we get a couple dozen calls a month." Why do more homeowners have the hots for chilly cellars? For starters, we're drinking more wine. While the United States still lags behind Europe in per-capita consumption, we're pulling more corks than we used to. The number of gallons consumed nationally has been climbing for a decade, up 5.2 percent last year alone, according to the Adams Beverage Group, which conducts alcohol market research. And with more wine flowing in American homes, more homeowners are pouring money into spaces in which to store and enjoy it.
One of TJB's homes on this fall's Parade is the "Dream Home North" in Blaine, which features a "European wine cellar." Last spring's Parade included another TJB home with a "wine grotto" featuring Venetian plaster walls and a cast bronze door with a grapevine motif. The home, also in Blaine, was built on spec and sold the first day of the spring Parade, Budzynski said. The buyer, Dennis Anderson, said the wine room was one factor in his and his wife's decision to buy the home. "If you're a wine drinker, you really get crazy about it," he said. "We had a wine cellar in our previous house, and a wine cellar was one of the things we were looking for." The grotto was not refrigerated, so Anderson asked TJB to install a wall unit to keep his wines cool. Now he wants to add a new racking system to display the bottles sideways so that he can see the labels. He doesn't consider himself a collector, just a guy who enjoys good wine. "I like a great merlot," he said. "I don't keep $300 bottles; I enjoy drinking it." Terri Anderson, who prefers chardonnay, considers the cellar a convenience. "In the business he's in [real estate], we entertain a lot," she said. "You get tired of running to the store [for wine], and you need a place to put it." Popular with remodelers Wine cellars are most common in high-end new construction, but homeowners with mainstream budgets and older homes also thirst for wine-related features. Farrell is seeing more wine-cooling units in apartments and model homes. Kathe Ostrom, president of C.N. Ostrom & Sons, said many of her clients are incorporating wine refrigerators into their kitchen remodeling projects. "Interest in wine is increasing as people travel more and are exposed to different things," she said. When Steve Kensinger hired Plekkenpol Builders Inc. to remodel his 1987-built home in Shorewood last year, he was determined to add a wine cellar. "I like all types of wine, especially California cabernets, and I wanted a better spot for it," he said. But the only available space was the walk-through to his furnace room. Although the area is small, about 7 by 8 feet, Kensinger got the 700-bottle capacity he wanted, along with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, ceramic-tile floor and brick-faced walls. "It definitely looks and feels like a wine cellar," said project manager Dave Goodlund. Even small wine cellars aren't inexpensive. The cost per square foot for many projects is comparable to remodeling a kitchen, Goodlund said. But the basic requirement -- a cool, dark storage environment -- doesn't have to be pricey. "Once you get the room insulated and refrigerated, it doesn't make that much difference what you keep the wine in -- it could be a cardboard box," said Jim Seal, owner of Custom Wine Cellars & Racks of Baldwin, Wis. "After that, it becomes a decorating choice." Terri Aberg and her husband are self-described "wine geeks," but until recently they made do with a basement closet as their cellar. "We had a cheesy rack we bought years ago," she said. The conditions weren't ideal, but their wines survived. Last year, when they remodeled the kitchen of their Minneapolis home, they decided to splurge on a SubZero wine refrigerator with different zones for reds and whites. Now their best bottles, the ones they save for special occasions, reside in the refrigerator. "It's nice not to have to run to the basement, and to know they are not going to get ruined," she said. Bare-bones cellars can be highly functional, Farrell said. "The big enemies of wine are light and heat. In our climate, the only thing you need to do is get it below ground and protected from the heat of the house. But people want bells and whistles. I had a root cellar that worked just fine, but my wife remodeled it on me. Now it has French doors." Some of the popular amenities, such as tasting tables, aren't even that practical, especially if they're actually in the cellar. At 55 degrees, "it's too cold to sit there; you'd need long johns," Seal said. To solve that problem, some homeowners are creating multi-room areas devoted to wine. Gene and Ken Andersen of Edina installed a glass wall in their cellar, at their interior designer's suggestion, so they could see the bottles from the adjacent room. "It's almost like looking at a piece of art," Gene said. For some, a wine cellar is an investment as well as a pleasure. When Valorie Klemz remodeled her old house in St. Paul's Highland Park neighborhood several years ago, with Seal's help, she spent several thousand dollars turning a basement storage room into a 1,500-bottle wine cellar, adding a wall-mounted cooling unit, redwood racks and a ceramic tile floor, which she laid herself. "I saw it as adding value to the house," she said. For oenophiles with a taste for fine vintages, a cellar can be practical, because they can buy wines and wine futures when they're young and relatively low-priced, then enjoy them later when their taste -- and cost -- have matured. Spending thousands of dollars on a glorified root cellar might not sound like a good value, but in the context of $500 and $1,000 bottles, it can be fiscally prudent. "The reason to have a cellar is to save money," Farrell said. ©2004 Star Tribune
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The fall Parade of Homes, now underway, includes at least 12 homes with wine cellars, twice the number featured on each of the past several tours, according to the Builders Association of the Twin Cities. That's still only about 1 percent of the homes on the tour.
But cellars attract a lot of attention and add "awe appeal," said Tom Budzynski, owner of TJB Homes Inc. "There's tremendous interest. Wine has become a big-demand drink, and people with a few bucks like to collect wines, show off their wines."