Notice we didn't claim a "well-stocked" wine cellar. These are our everyday wines, stacked in our "under-the-stairs" wine cellar created with concrete bricks stacked against the insulated walls, an idea we stole from our friend Carlo Zarri of Villa San Carlo who uses a similar technique for his bulk wine storage under the hotel. Unlike Carlo, we have no temperature control here, our good wines are kept in a smaller controlled temperature unit. These wines are what most Italians would drink, purchased in bulk, either at a "vino sfuso" shop, poured into whatever container was handy, or purchased directly from a winery in a large, glass "demi-john" and siphoned into a carafe for the table. We enjoyed wine purchased this way back in Viterbo (and saved a lot of dough!) but in the USA we're pretty much limited to bottles from stores in Minnesota or Nebraska. Our good friend "Il Ducatista" just came back from the grand-opening of a Trader Joe's store in Omaha with a few cases of vino for us, so we're now stocked up for awhile.Note how Larry's displayed the fancy boxes for REALLY GOOD WINES in our "cellar" along with some other wine-related stuff to class it up....just a bit!
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI love the look of this. Do you have any info on the type of brick and where it can be purchased?
Thanks!
These blocks are used for construction of residential porches they tell me. I went down to the local home-improvement center with a wine bottle, tried 'em for size and chose these for their interlocking feature, though I think these days you can buy special, cast concrete blocks made for wine storage - though I'd guess those would cost a lot more than these. This was done on the cheap!!
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