Home cellars: Christine Rudman
Putting your palate on the line – on a daily basis – in numerous wine competitions and challenges may sound like a dream job to many. But Christine Rudman will assure you it really is hard work. Having judged numerous Wine magazine competitions and challenges, she’s a dedicated wine aficionado in the truest sense. She served as principal of the Cape Wine Academy (after a career in marketing with the Stellenbosch Farmers’ Winery) and is a qualified Cape Wine Master who spent nine years at the helm of the Institute of Cape Winemakers.
Photograph by Toby Murphy
As a freelance wine writer and member of numerous judging panels, with wine farms desperate to meet her approval, you’d expect Christine’s cellar to knock your socks off. And it doesn’t disappoint – her home contains not one, but two cellars, each with their own allure. And the good news is that one does not need a large space or a particularly large budget to recreate aspects of these cellars.
Christine and her husband Theo started collecting wine long before they got married, and when the time came to merge their cellars (the wines had until then been simply stored on racks in cupboards in their respective homes), they realised they had a severe shortage of space. Fortunately, they had bought a four-bedroom house, which made converting one of the spare bedrooms into a 2 000-bottle cellar an easy option. “We initially used our existing wine racks, but they were inadequate for what we visualised so we had most of the wooden racks custom-built. A carpenter friend of Theo’s did them over about a two-week period. For maximum use of space and stability they went floor to ceiling along the side walls and a unit was also built in the middle of the room above a steel rack I had.”
Christine didn’t allow the existing cupboards in the room to go to waste. The doors of the cupboards were removed and racks were built into the existing frame. Finally, the window was sealed and an air-conditioner was installed.
But, with both being enthusiastic wine collectors, the spare room was soon bursting at the seams. “The underground cellar came about 10 years later when the room cellar got full. We had lost track of the wines stored in the spare room because there were now also boxes in every available space. We could never find what we were looking for. We realised racks gave us best visual and organisational control, so we had the underground cellar built in the garage. It was being used as a storeroom anyway; no cars were parked there.” (It would not have been advisable to store wine beneath a garage that was in use – aside from the heat and odours, the constant movement of cars in and out the garage produces vibration which, naturally, is not good for your wine.)
The fibreglass spiral cellar, with an impressive cylindrical design that spirals its way 10 metres underground, has capacity for 1 000 bottles in 10 rings of 100 each, double-stacked. It’s just wide enough for one person to walk down the steep flight of steps.
“I no longer use the bottom level,” says Christine of her underground cellar. “It tends to leak when there’s been a lot of rain. I’ve had it repaired once already, but it’s due a second resealing.”
The underground cellar was designed by a Frenchman – who was “very dishy”, according to Christine – but unfortunately the information she had on him was long discarded. “He brought a team of workers and organised everything in about a month. The biggest job was the 10-metre excavation, but it was done with an astonishing lack of mess. He brought detailed drawings and had the circular fibreglass structure made in Cape Town. The hole’s walls were also sealed to make them strong and moisture-proof.”
Being underground, the cellar is cool and very dark – ideal conditions for wine storage. But Christine has discovered that there are limitations to its design, which one should take heed of before embarking on this type of project. The cellar racks were designed for conventional bottle shapes (the sort prevalent in the early ‘90s). The wines Christine collects today, however, are often in long bottles, or heavy, bigger bottle shapes. “This means the space has become even more restricted and going down those steps is now a very precarious exercise. On more than one occasion I’ve accidently bumped a bottle and then there’s a cascade. Ideally, it should have been bigger, but there was a space limitation in the garage.”
When it comes to stocking her cellars, Christine concedes that she has a broad interest in local and international wines, which can make purchasing decisions difficult. Her solution has been to join several buying groups and, of course, attend a lot of tastings, “so when I come across something that impresses me, I buy it. But these days I seldom buy an entire case, now it’s just a few bottles of each wine. I’d rather have the range than big stocks of a few favourites”. Sage advice for anyone planning to start a cellar at home.
In fact, Christine believes that it’s very easy to create a home cellar, especially if you have a spare room, however small. She suggests doing everything in stages: “Have some racks, pack sealed cases in as well and, as your collection grows, so can the storage space. It’s lockable to restrict access. And, of course, you must have an air-conditioner.
“For a long time I had a National which worked fantastically, but eventually it was so rusted it had to be replaced. I chose a GMC, the Kelon model, because it looked good and fitted the available space. It’s very quiet and keeps a constant temperature, which I want. The ideal would be a refrigeration unit to get the temperature down to 16ºC, but when I saw how much it would cost and calculated how much wine I could buy for that, the decision made itself!”
It comes as no surprise that Christine has some really special bottles of wine in her cellar, but she struggles to identify any favourites. “It depends on mood, the people I’m with, the occasion, the food we’re having. I’d hate to pick just a few… When I get down to just one bottle of something special, I tend to keep it for a tasting. For example, I have two bottles of old but very famous red Burgundy that will be shared with some friends shortly – we’re all contributing our precious bottles for a tasting and dinner. The wines might be past it, but how fabulous if they’re not, and you’re in the company of likeminded people! I’ve done dinners like that before and it’s great when the wines show their credentials.”
CHRISTINE’S TOP TIPS FOR ANYONE STARTING A HOME CELLAR:
• Buy only wines you like – not by reputation or recommendation. That means you must have tasted it before buying.
• Don’t buy by the case, rather buy three bottles of a number of wines than have stock getting old too quickly or the remainder of a case just sit there because your tastes have changed.
• Take the trouble to store your wine properly, at a constant low temperature, dark and catalogued.
