For me, my cellar is a bit of a retreat where I can not only enjoy a glass or two but think about a problem at hand or not think at all! To that end, in planning your cellar, have a place for glassware as well as a small chilling unit to store a selection of whites if that happens to be your immediate fancy on a particular day. Perhaps most important is to give yourself room to grow. Once bitten by the collecting bug, it amazes how fast 100 bottles become 1,000 and 1,000 become 2,000. So, if you can, allow yourself space that seems nuts at the time. I will warn you, however, that nature abhors a vacuum and you will find yourself filling the space faster than you can imagine.

One small but important note is to construct or buy racks that have the flexibility to handle bottles of different sizes and shapes. Whereas thirty years ago bottles came in a handful of shapes, sometimes it seems as if everyone today is trying to distinguish themselves with a bottle no one else has which can make for a storage nightmare or worse, an expensive red puddle on the floor.

Gregg Popovich