When the COVID-19 pandemic was upending the country, housebound homeowners moved quickly to enhance amenities in their residences. Wine cellars proliferated. But according to companies that outfit Delaware homes with wine storage units and cellars, demand is now stronger than ever.
Business is booming at Hawkins & Sons, a family-owned appliance sales and service company (for 60-plus years) based in Wilmington. They completed a remodel of their showroom last year and added Thermador to their line of wine column brands, which includes Miele, Monogram, and Summit, as well as Sub-Zero—one of the company’s most popular high-end lines. Owners Ed and Karen Hawkins and their son Matt cater to many clients in Wilmington and in Delaware’s beach communities.
Though the units showcased on the Hawkins & Sons website are sleek and impressive, the company also does custom work, often partnering with local kitchen design firms like Allura Bath & Kitchen, based in Newark. Requests for custom panels and double—and even triple—columns are common.
Tom Smithson, owner of Pennsylvania-based Baltic Leisure, agrees that the interest in storing and showcasing fine wines has not abated in Delaware. The wine rooms his company installs are anything but utilitarian. Some jobs run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the size of the space and the homeowner’s aesthetic ambitions.
Clients request all kinds of designs, he says. Islands in the middle of the room are popular but are chosen more for visual interest than function. “They have this little bistro area and things of that nature,” Smithson says, “but at the end of the day, nobody is sitting in a room in 55-degree temperature.”
If you want to socialize in view of your wine collection, take a different approach. Clients who appreciate a more contemporary look often choose frameless glass, he says. This type of enclosure can be the highlight of a living space—one can entertain in comfort and still admire the arrangement of wines. “Unfortunately, glass is very inefficient,” Smithson notes. “You’re going to have to get a bigger cooling system to make it work.”
While some clients still favor the use of rounded, natural stone for a more traditional aesthetic, a ledger stone design—in which panels of rectangles are arranged to create a stacked look—can be integrated into a traditional wine cellar while still offering earthiness.
Diamond-shaped cabinets are prevalent—they are pleasing to the eye but also serve a practical purpose: “They will take any-sized bottle, from a split to a 750-milligram bottle to a magnum to even a 3-liter bottle,” Smithson says. “Rows and columns are normally for a certain size, usually a 750, and then if you want to go to champagnes, that width changes.”
Baltic Leisure specializes in an interior architectural flourish called a “waterfall,” in which a stairway-like cabinet descends into the center of the room. “If the client has a wider room, they may want to bring the storage out into the middle and not just use all the walls,” Smithson says. “It will allow them more storage.”
Unique wine cellar design also breaks up the monotony: “We do a little of this, a little of that, to make it look interesting, so it’s not the same racks, which can look like a post office, with slots up and down,” Smithson says. One client requested a labyrinth wall design, and though the building process was arduous, the result proved eye-catching—it’s definitely a tasty conversation piece.
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