Real LI
Buying and selling real estate in the communities of Long Island
posts Next post »'Music video' Hewlett Neck home on market for $5.5 million
New book features three Hamptons at-home wine cellars
Photo credit: Handout
The newly published "Living with Wine" (Clarkson Potter, $75) features 30 lavish and resplendent in-home wine cellars, three of which are on Long Island. Lee Zinser, president of Cellarworks Inc., a design firm that specializes in wine cellars, was the designer on all three projects.
Westhampton resident Sven Borho grew up among grapes. His grandparents owned a vineyard in southern Germany that he worked regularly from an early age. But it wasn’t until he was an adult and a successful investment banker spending time in the Hamptons that he developed an adult interest in wine. Wanting the wine cellar located off the living room in his historic 1880 Westhampton home required pushing out an exterior wall. The final selection of the wood was koa (most commonly seen on the back of violins) and the flooring is 2,000-year-old Jerusalem limestone. The 16-by-20-foot wine cellar has a confluence of ancient building material and sophisticated technology -- fingerprint-required access and Internet-based remote access (Borho needs to be able to accept deliveries while he’s on business in Europe).
When building their Bridgehampton home, Michael Brown’s 3,000-bottle wine cellar was his project and his project alone. His wife was responsible for the rest of the home. Most of the design elements revolve around Brown’s zeal for Japanese food and sake. Sake requires a lower-than-usual temperature. "The whole reason to have a wine cellar is to avoid refrigeration," Zinser says. But that was dealt with in Brown’s 25-by-15-foot room, and dealt with beautifully. Using pinpoint lighting and African mahogany, the room is dreamy in rich caramel colors. Brown has built his collection in less than a year because his method is to buy two cases at a time -- one case for drinking now and the other to age or resell. And he planned ahead to when his children might develop a premature interest in wine. His wine cellar, too, has a fingerprint-required access device.
Patrick McMahon’s 6,400-square-foot Water Mill home has a 2,000-bottle collection in a subterranean complex that includes a deluxe home theatre, a billiard table, a tasting lounge and a wine cave. Again, African mahogany was the choice for shelves and cabinets. There is much stone and honey onyx mosaic, and the results are beauty in glimmer and glow.
Tags: Bridgehampton , Westhampton , Water Mill , wine cellars , house and home , books
Search recent home sales on LI.