| As wine collecting becomes a more popular American hobby, some aficionados find they just don't have enough space to store their cases of Bordeaux and California cabernet.
Americans are drinking more and better wines, experts say, so businesses are offering humidity- and temperature-controlled storage to a crowd of collectors that's growing in number and sophistication.
"When you start buying wine, it sneaks up on you, and pretty soon you have run out of space," said Tom Matthews, executive editor of Wine Spectator magazine, the bible for wine enthusiasts.
Business is so good at Fairfield, N.J.,-based LLK Enterprises that, even after it doubled its 10,000 square feet, the facility is full again.
LLK, an affiliate of the New York wine shop Acker Merrall & Condit, hopes to triple its space in 2007, said storage director Tim Sharpe.
Many wine storage companies are offshoots of moving companies, self-storage businesses and wine stores.
Guarantee Wine Storage in Jersey City , N.J. , is a division of Moishe's Moving, a well-known moving company in the New York area. The company began offering wine storage five years ago, adding to its businesses of document, art and data storage.
The 10,000-square foot space in a historic 85-year-old warehouse offers self-storage lockers or cases neatly stacked on shelves with a computerized inventory, said operations manager Shaul Shemesh. The minimum charge is $80 monthly or $1.85 per case per month; most collectors store 200 bottles.
Wine has increasingly become a part of American popular culture, said Sergio Esposito, owner of Italian Wine Merchants, a Manhattan wine store whose partners include restaurant superstars Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich. "The United States is all about new wealth and the status that it brings," he said. "Wine has become an investment."
Impact Databank's 2006 report on the U.S. wine market, published by M. Shanken Communications, shows a 45 percent increase in wine consumption over 30 years. Per capita, Americans in 1975 drank 2.18 gallons of wine compared with 3.17 gallons in 2005.
The full report can be viewed on http://www.news-journalonline.com
|
