Home cellars: Ronald Gault
Wine cellars are packed with psychological, economic and cultural clues. Who we are, where we have been and what we hope to become is laid down among our bottles and boxes. Read the racks right and a wine cellar provides evidence of everything from tender anniversaries to life-changing business deals. From daily drudge relief to that special bottle saved for half-imagined future happiness, it’s all there.
The inevitable accumulation of anticipation, celebration and consolation means that viticultural vaults are innately romantic environments. With this in mind, many cellar designers spin off into dodgy droit de seigneur, bodice-ripping behind the barrels-style flights of fancy and consequently create wine storage spaces laden with ye-olde dust, spiral staircases and ghastly belle epoque posters of cancan girls.
Ronald Gault, retired head of JP Morgan Chase SA, and his journalist wife Charlayne Hunter-Gault, provide proof that wine does not need to be kept in a room planned in collaboration with Mills and Boon. And that real love is both simpler and more complicated than that found in fairy tales. Their white-walled, wooden-doored, approximately six-by-four-metre cellar has been annexed from the edge of a large garage in their Westcliff, Johannesburg, home, and it is the definition of sensible storage. The cellar is fitted with functional equipment designed (in collaboration with Michael Fridjhon) to keep their roughly 1 000-bottle collection in ideal conditions.
Ron says of his wrought-iron Steelrax shelving system: “It works for me and was chosen not because the design is pretty but because it won’t damage or chip and it’s very space efficient. And, most of all, because I can see if there are problems – if a bottle was leaking I would know right away.”
Despite the no-nonsense, minimalist approach to wine storage there is plenty of love laid down amidst the thermostatically controlled air. There is a smattering of French, Chilean, Argentinian and American wine, but the vast majority of bottles in the Gaults’ cellar are South African, reflecting the couple’s earnest enjoyment of their adopted home. Charlayne says, “The contents of our cellar encapsulate who we are in relation to South Africa. We are permanent residents here but US citizens. I’ve been coming here since 1985 and watching the evolution of a society has been a privilege. We appreciate and embrace the country – with wine very much at the top of that list of appreciation.” She continues, “Settling in South Africa has truly enhanced our lives, especially in terms of our taste for all things good. Our love of South African wine speaks to our embrace of new people, places and things.”
Referring to Passages, the wine that the couple make with Bruwer Raats in Stellenbosch, Charlayne says, “We have a real desire to share the joy of our ongoing journey to the horizon with others. Making wine here and promoting it internationally is about a love of this land and its people.” The couple’s enthusiasm for South Africa and its wine is made manifest by way of regular ‘Taste and Talk’ sessions in wine bars, clubs, restaurants and private homes across the USA, at which Ron guides customers to an understanding of South African wine while his wife describes the history, culture and politics of the place that engendered it. As she says, “South African wine is delicious but also accessible and marketable, and part of making it so is to tell the story of a country, a people and a wine.” Ron adds that, “The wine is a way for our American friends to have a South African experience. To share South Africa with them. And they in turn embrace the idea of Africa through the talking and tasting.”
The Gaults’ cellar and use of wine is steeped in African-American/African diaspora chic at its most cosmopolitan. Charlayne speaks lovingly of how the “sassy pepper flavour of Passages Merlot makes magic with goat curry” and many minutes are devoted to recollecting the perfection of the tropical, fruity flavours of the Passages Chardonnay in combination with a lime and allspice-laden Jamaicanstyle fish dish. Even in the midst of the couple’s enthusiasm for Africa there are moments of Franco-Americana at its most gastro-political. Ron pulls a Bâtard- Montrachet from his racks and recollects that “we drank this wine at the Four Seasons the night Nixon resigned. We were having a bet on whether he would resign. The loser bought dinner, the winner bought the wine”.
It is precisely because the couple have such a profound love for their wine and its terroir that their cellar is so unadorned. Ron says, “I like that here the wine is always the focus. If the cellar were grander I think I might lose that. After all, that’s why I come here – to store and choose wine. I keep tasting notes attached to the bottles to facilitate the process of picking the best wine for any given occasion. I keep it in commodious conditions so as to treat it with the respect it deserves.” With that in mind, Ron has installed a Carrier refrigeration unit because, “it’s better than an air conditioner in that it pumps cool air all the time. It doesn’t switch on and off the way air conditioners do”.
This is definitely a cellar designed with consumption rather than financial investment in mind. “For us wine is about friendship above all else,” says Ron. “If you are buying it, making it or drinking it purely as an investment or to score social points, you are missing its true value. It’s like art. You should buy it because you like it. Some of it does have material value, but you buy it to share with friends to celebrate life.” Charlayne adds, “Wine has narrow margins – you don’t go into it to make a trillion dollars. You do it to be with friends. If you can still come out financially a little bit ahead, then you must consider it a success.”
The ‘life is for living, drink not store’ philosophy notwithstanding, Ron does keep a tiered year-by-year selection of Epicurean dating back to its first 2003 vintage. The wine that he makes at Rupert & Rothschild, Franschhoek, with his friends Mutle Mogase, Mbhazima Shilowa and Moss Ngoasheng is the first thing you see when you walk into the Gaults’ cellar and there is a controlled yet palpable pleasure when he talks of his interest in how their “collective stylistic vision of power and elegance will play out over time”.
As with all real love, there are compromises involved. “If I were to do it again, perhaps I would have a larger space. It might be nice to be able to sit down and perhaps entertain in the cellar, but what we’ve got works for us. It’s clean and efficient, I know what’s where. Besides, the use of the available space comes out of a tussle between my wife’s clothing storage needs and the wine.” He surveys the relative square metreage given over in the garage to clothing cupboards and that allocated to the wine cellar and says dryly, “As you can see, the clothes won.”
TIPS FROM THE GAULTS
• Buy wine you like, don’t buy it as an investment. True value is in the friendship.
• Design a cellar that respects the wine – constant, low temperature, dark conditions and set out in such
a way that it is easy to see if there are problems.
