Wine Cellar Emergency – Solved!
The Cellar Manager, LLC
Recently, I’ve been writing quite a bit about passion for wine. Often, those of us who have this passion direct it towards collecting (and drinking) great bottles, working in the wine trade, or writing about our experiences. Some, a chosen few, take it to the limit and give up everything to make wine commercially.
But, I have met someone who figured out another way to pursue his passion for wine as his career…
Those of us who had wine stored at a certain wine storage facility in the Santa Clarita Valley probably remember well that Friday night when we got the email about its imminent closure – or waking up to read that same email on Saturday morning.
Fortunately, I already had a plan of action.
Several months earlier I had explored the possibility of moving our wine to a wine storage facility in the San Fernando Valley – Terminal 55. (I hope to report more on Terminal 55 in another article at some point.) At that time, they had referred me to Matt Goldfarb of The Cellar Manager LLC to help me with the move. I spoke with Matt and was very impressed, but decided to defer to supporting our local business here in the SCV. Well, hindsight is 20/20, isn’t it?
Anyway, upon receiving the fateful email, I reached out to both Amie at Terminal 55 and to Matt of The Cellar Manager to set up what I should have done months ago. Amie reserved my space needs for me immediately. Matt put my mind at ease and he and I set up a date for the move as well as a meeting at Terminal 55 so I could get some of his boxes from him.
Why the boxes?
Have you ever noticed how wine bottles and the cardboard cases they come in are in many shapes and sizes? When you store wine in a locker, you probably want to stack your cases up as high as possible, and you probably want to turn the bottles upside down in order to keep the corks wet. But with bottles and cases of different sizes, how safe are those stacks? And, with the bottles essentially resting on their necks, how high should they be piled up anyway?
Well, Matt has designed universal cases wherein the bottles actually rest on their sides and the boxes can be stacked up high, as the thick case walls themselves bear the load. Very efficient! And the cases hold almost any size/shape of 750ml bottles, even my beloved Turleys.
Matt does offer a packing and inventory service, but I decided to take the cheaper route. So, I spent the weekend prior to the move packing up my wine into the boxes that Matt had designed.
On moving day, everything went perfectly. It took Matt and his assistant just half an hour to load up our wine into their van, another half hour to get down to Terminal 55, and maybe an hour or so after that to load the cases into their new home. Smooth as silk.
Sometime after the move, I had the opportunity to sit down with Matt and learn more about his company, The Cellar Manager LLC. It turns out, not surprisingly, that handing cellar emergencies is only a very small part of what Matt does.
Coming from the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business, Matt went to work for La Cachette Restaurant as Special Events & Catering Manager as well as Assistant Restaurant Manager. It was there that he was really exposed to amazing wines and found what he was truly interested in focusing on. Matt left La Cachette and went to work for a wine collection consultant and wrote for Art and Living Magazine, all the while honing his focus and passion for wine and working towards what he ultimately started up in 2011, his own wide advisory company.
Per Matt’s LinkedIn page, these are the services he offers:
“The Cellar Manager, LLC aids clients in developing a more comprehensive understanding of and appreciation for their wine collection.
We offer the following services:
– Performing and maintaining comprehensive electronic inventories
– Assisting with the buying and selling of wine through a variety of established networks
– Cellar packing and moving
– Arranging safe, secure, & temperature controlled wine storage
– Advising on cellar design and construction
– Consulting on wine-related events”
The range of services doesn’t do justice to the person doing them. Matt clearly brings his wine passion to bear in everything he does and if one good thing came from having to schlep our wine to its new home it’s been getting to know him.
Michael Perlis has been pursuing his passion for wine for more than 25 years. He has had the good fortune of having numerous mentors to show him the way, as well as a wonderful wife who encourages him and shares his interest. After a couple of decades of learning about wine, attending events, visiting wineries and vineyards, and tasting as much wine as he possibly could, he had the amazing luck to meet Eve Bushman. Now, as Contributing Editor for Eve’s Wine 101, he does his best to bring as much information as possible about wine to Eve’s Wine 101 faithful readers. Michael is also Vice President of Eve’s Wine 101 Consulting (http://evewine101.com/eveswine101consulting/). Michael can be contacted at michaelthezinfan@aol.com.
Thanks Michael! Was our pleasure helping you.
Great piece!