Homes & Estates Florida Portfolio February 2018 | Page 8

For a client’s mountain refuge in Jackson Hole,
Wyoming, Kevin Burke of Carney Logan Burke
Architects designed a stunning subterranean space
with a wine room that holds over 7,500 bottles in a 55°F
and 70-percent relative humidity environment, a tasting
area and an entertaining lounge. The expansive space
evokes the feeling of a modern wine cave with a wall
of stone, while a curvilinear ceiling made of solid
mahogany “feels as if you’re almost unraveling a large
wine cask.” A wall-to-wall window of glass extends to
the outdoors to grab natural light. The wine itself lives
behind a UV-protected glass wall and motorized curtain.
“The owner can set it up so he leads his guests
down to this lounge area, and the wine may not be
presented yet,” says the architect. “With the touch of
a button, the curtain retracts to reveal these beautiful
racks of wine.”
In Dana Point’s The Strand At Headlands, Light
designed a similar subterranean space, day-lighted to
the beach and a dining room with a glass wine wall with
temperature barrier as storage. The idea, he says, “was
to have guests come to the house, meet and greet in the
living room with cocktails and usher them downstairs
to the grotto for a special tasting experience, then roll
everyone into the theater for entertainment.”
Wine galleries with separate cellars for white
wine, red wine, Champagne and a walk-in humidor for
cigars are also becoming a popular trend among the
ultra wealthy. Notes Hurst: “The galleria of rooms is the
billionaire must-have. You can have a collection of cellars
holding all that you need and a beautiful tasting area
that’s in the center as the focal point, tying it all together.”
Taking a turn
Genuwine Cellars
Another client requested a motorized spinning device
to show off a custom-made 9-liter bottle.
Let there be light
Light may be wine’s enemy, but it is an
essential element in today’s wine rooms. In fact,
many architects and design teams work closely with
lighting designers to make sure that artistic elements
and bottles are accented properly, while also striking
the right ambiance in the space. Use of LED lighting
— a cooler alternative to traditional incandescent and
halogen lights — allows homeowners to create unique
color patterns in their wine rooms. For a 2,000-bottle
wine cellar set underneath a pool house in Franklin,
Tennessee, designer Jamie Beckwith opted to go high-
tech by installing color-changing LED lights, acrylic wine
racks and a glass ceiling with retractable blackout
6 | Homes & Estates | Florida Portfolio
shades to protect the wine. She calls the look “TRON
cathedral,” which matched the Old World Gothic style
of the 12,398-square-foot residence.
“We added task lighting so we could see the
wine bottles, and under-cabinet lighting, as well as
some directional lighting,” says the owner of Beckwith
Interiors. “We quickly realized that as the LEDs moved
through the rainbow of colors, we could modify the
lighting to create a different mood for parties. There’s
a festiveness to it.”
Places to entertain
Multifunctional entertaining spaces with
attached wine rooms have recently emerged as a
trend among serious collectors who have large wine
portfolios, plus the square footage and financial means
to build them.
“To me, the Spiral Cellar is a quintessential
example of function meeting form,” says Hurst,
who notes that Genuwine is the North American
representative for U.K.-based Spiral Cellars. “The act of
walking over a glass Spiral Cellar is a cool experience.
Our clients also love opening a James Bond-style
retractable glass door in the floor and walking down
under the ground to fetch their bottles.”
Developed in 1978, the Spiral Cellar system
uses the earth to insulate and create optimum storage
conditions. Spiral Cellars in Europe use passive
ventilation to regulate the temperature, but Genuwine
has instituted commercial-grade climate control
to the North American version in order to keep the
temperature at a cool 55°F. Only recently have Spiral
Cellars gained a following in locales like Silicon Valley
and Texas.
Capturing the art of living well
The newest generation of wine rooms is a
testament to what Plato believed and every oenophile
already knows: that fine wine has inherent value, meant
to be seen and imbibed in good company. After all,
says Kleinhans, “Nothing quite captures the ideal of
living and eating well like wine.”