We may be spending more time in our kitchens than we’d like at the moment. But take the opportunity to look around and get to know it, with kitchen companies offering great options to UK housebuilders. Buying brand new means a brand new kitchen.
Gone are the days of bottles collecting dust in a rickety wine rack; today, domestic climate-controlled cabinets offer not only optimum storage conditions but the perfect showcase for a collection, says Rupert Bates.
Wine is a smart investment with intoxicating returns if you have the willpower to watch your claret mature rather than drink it.
I’m not sure Bacchus would approve, but it helps if you can at least look at and admire your collection, if not drawing the cork as frequently as you might wish.
Spiral Cellars
English wines are gaining in popularity and plaudits and even tweaking the noses of the French at international awards ceremonies. Champagne, as a brand, may be exclusive to its French region, but Sussex, Kent and Hampshire are firmly on global wine lists, with wine production one of the fastest growing areas of the UK economy.
Head for the Waddesdon estate near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire and you’ll find not only in Waddesdon Wine, the sole UK distributor for all Rothschild family wineries – think Mouton Cadet and Chateau Lafite, as I do frequently – but the gold winner in the Best House category of the 2019 WhatHouse? Awards, with the Golden Mede development – a JV between the Rothschild Foundation and ZeroC, part of the Places for People group – in the grounds of the Rothschild estate.
Spiral Cellars
The alternative to living close to fine wine is to live above it – in the case of Spiral Cellars, literally. This is not just about innovative wine storage, but interior styling and often within the extended kitchen area.
“We have witnessed a shift towards wine storage becoming integrated into the design of a room, rather than just a bolt-on or kept out of sight entirely,” says managing director Lucy Hargreaves.
Spiral Cellars
“Spiral Cellars are seen as a way of injecting a certain wow-factor into a kitchen space and showcasing a passion in the main entertaining space in the house. The kitchen is the hub of entertaining, and it is no surprise that we install most of our cabinets and cellars here.”
Spiral Cellars will tailor your wine storage to collection size and budget, both supply and install, and can also advise on and deliver the wine.
The company, based in Wimbledon, works closely with kitchen showrooms. Its cellars, creating the optimum climatic and storage conditions, can be installed in less than nine days and the business, founded nearly 40 years ago, has created nearly 4,000 wine cellars.
It is not just cellars, but wine rooms, cabinets, walls and even modular self-build kits to take your party popularity and home entertaining in the kitchen and beyond to another level.
Fisher & Paykel
Appliance manufacturer Fisher & Paykel, with its global headquarters in New Zealand – a country that knows a fair bit about wine – works with master sommeliers to ensure its wine cabinets in the kitchen are the best they can be in terms of storage conditions, managing the light, temperature, humidity and agitation.
Fisher & Paykel has launched a new integrated column wine cabinet to its range to preserve curated wine collections, be they sparkling, whites or reds.
“Wine inherently does not want to survive. From the moment it is filled in the bottle, wine is in a permanent state of degradation, and how that wine degrades or ages is what makes it an incredible experience” says Alex Van Vliet, product manager of Fisher & Paykel.
“With exacting control for ageing, and fine-tuned modes for perfect serving temperatures, integrated column wine cabinets cater both to those who are deeply passionate about wine and its storage, and to those who love to entertain and beautifully showcase their collection.”
I need a drink.