I’m deep into wine cellars these days, thanks to a new project in collaboration with multi-talented Samantha Nestor and brilliant photographer Andrew French. It’s a book about high –end wine cellars-- Clarkson Potter (August, 2009). As a result I’ve been wallowing in wine porn. Extreme wine porn. And dripping in gossip from great cellar designers about their clients and from collectors about their stories. I love this stuff.

One genre of story category that always amuses is the bottle that got away. I'm not talking about the runaway bottle at auction, but the one that was liberated by a guest, a domestic, a child or a lover.

Since my own ‘cellar’ is modest, so are my personal stories, such as the time Ronny, known in my book as the Owl Man, brought my only 1997 magnum of Chinon (les Galluches from J-M Raffault) to a friend’s house who couldn’t care less about the wine. It was extremely painful especially when I realized that Ronny thought a magnum was just another name for a cheap supermarket bottle. To remedy further disasters I left town I pulled several bottles for his Drinking Pleasure when I left town. Everyone has a story like this relative to the rarity of bottles they own.

This weekend I was interviewing a guy with a modest 5,000-bottle cellar up in Bedford, New York who created and stocks “The Children’s Cellar” for his grown kids when they are visiting. While he hordes the 1986 Margaux and the 1959 La Tache for himself, his children and guests get to choose from their private stash; New Zealand sauvingon blanc and Oregon pinot, fit punishment for when his son opened several bottles of 20 year old Le Montrachet’s for kicks.

But the one that really got me came from the cellar builder to the stars,
David Spon".
Spon was extremely entertaining this morning. Oh, the stories he can tell about people I am not allowed to mention like the publisher of a rather famous large format wine magazine. And the found of a certain on-line company giant with a big tower at 59th street who is building a huge cellar in the Washington area. His customers are truly wine collectors with that much clout.

David, who know of the collector’s story with the thirsty children, told me a much better one. Another client, owner of an investment firm, walked into his house, opened the fridge and found a 1/3 left in a 1978 Guigal La Landonne. He was mystified. He was irate. He was...homicidal. He was going to blame one of his kids. Forget the recipes, which abound for Barolo in the risotto or for bourguignon in the boeuf, when he interrogated his cook he found out the bottle, one carried carefully home from a recent auction, was used in Monday’s Meat Loaf.