Let’s face it. When you are a true wine lover, labels matter. Not because you want to boast about the Bentleys of your favorite bottled vintages, but because you want to find the wine you most enjoy drinking, quickly, easily and happily. And when you are a collector of prized wines from around the world, like Jim Cash, founder of Revel Cellars, you want to store them where you can see them.
That was the motivation behind his innovative wine cellar cabinetry. Each is a meticulously crafted masterpiece of design and engineering that promises easy, eye-candy access to bottles, properly stored, chilled and protected until they’re poured into a waiting glass.
“I have been a wine collector for 35 years now, maybe more. I stopped counting a little while ago,” shared Jim when we spoke to him about his inventions, lauded by aficionados as the world’s best cellars. “When we founded Revel in 2009, you had very limited choices as far as how to store your wine. There was the traditional wine rack where you grab the bottle by the cork end and you stick it in the little cubby. That’s what I had before I built my own cellar, and I hated it, because I could never find the bottle I was looking for. All I could see were the cork ends. I had to pull out five or ten bottles to find the one I was looking for. Sometimes they wouldn’t fit. Sometimes I scratched the label trying to jam them in. I wanted something that was more functional and something that I could work with easier.”
Jim hails from the construction industry and although his background was in business development, he knows how to build things.
“I was looking at my wine rack one day, reimagining it into a system that worked the way I wanted, when I realized I just wanted a drawer that I could pull out and look at five or six bottles all at once. So I set out to buy one. After doing extensive online research, I came up empty handed. No such thing was available. It didn’t exist. That’s where my construction background came into play,” he explained.
Working closely with his network of millwork subcontractors, he set out to design and build drawers that would be made with dowels instead of bottoms to promote the most efficient airflow. He measured hundreds upon hundreds of wine bottles to ascertain proper sizing proportions for his purpose-built wine drawers. Then he employed lazy susan technology with the same dowel structure to create a wheel that made the best use of space in the corners where the bank of drawers met. Putting it all together, he created a wine cellar that not only met all of Jim’s needs, it exceeded his own expectations.
“At no point in time during this process did I give one shred of thought to what it would look like. It was in my basement. It was just for me. I didn’t plan on it being a showcase. I just wanted something that gave me the ability to see the wine bottles and the labels, so I could find things quickly and take inventory easily. Form follows function, I think. I tried to design it in a very functional and well-engineered way with minimalistic construction and design. I think it is beautiful, mainly because of the way that the cabinetry gets out of the way when you want to see the wine.
His neighbor, a patent attorney, encouraged him to do a patent search on his inventions and the rest is history. His wine cellars are coveted showcases for wine collections around the world, taking shape in private homes and wineries like nothing else on the market does.
“When we are given the dimensions of a space, we start with the wine and work outwards from there. A typical interior designer will start with the room, the color scheme, the lighting and the finishes, and then more or less back into the wine. We do exactly the opposite. We focus on the wine itself and create a display just for that. Because our market is throughout the world, we don’t send people on site to measure and things like that. We work with a design and architectural team on the receiving end to coordinate lighting, colors and finishes. In the end, it all needs to come together so it looks seamless and intentional.”
While they partner with one of the leading manufacturers of wine cellar cooling systems worldwide to provide their customers with a trusted resource, when it comes to wine storage, Revel only works with their own proprietary products.
“We have the ability to work with customers anywhere in the world. Because they can’t get what we have locally, we work with them and take their dimensions, and then we custom design the cellar for them. We have a well-established method of working with our customers so that everything gets delivered and fits perfectly, “Jim told us. “Our business model is totally unique in that nobody else designs and builds them and ships them fully assembled all around the world.”
Revel Cellars are a high value proposition and their niche clientele, many well-known and all well-heeled and well-bottled, expect to be taken care of. Their customers, avid collectors of the world’s finest wines, value quality and integrity above all else, seek Revel out for their expertise, ingenuity and excellence from design to detail. Like Jim, they want to appreciate their wines visually, and care for them properly in a handsome temperature-controlled environment with effortless ease of access. If any aspect of the cellar does not meet a customer’s expections, vaults don’t fit or perform, Revel will address any issues to their full satisfaction.
“Our cellars are not for everyone but are everything a serious collector could want,” said Jim, who keeps innovating to keep up with modern-day design trends. “I am a very committed creative problem solver. So anything we do is going to be wine-display forward. And I just can’t stop thinking about it until I have something that I want to put forward.”
Revel’s wine cabinetry storage systems create an ecosystem of customizable and interchangeable components that cater to a wide range of designs, including traditional and contemporary styles, with a variety of finishes and materials, as well as systems designed specifically for glass enclosures. The most recognizable feature of Revel’s designs is their mobility. Their wine “drawers” pull out for easy access, wine wheels fit into corners and rotate, and they also design super-functional, super-efficient revel-ution towers designed for glass enclosures that rotate 360 degrees and can store 144 bottles in eight-foot towers that fit anywhere. These innovations enhance wine visibility and allow collectors to peruse their collection without handling the bottles unnecessarily.
One of the most dramatic advancements in wine cellar design is the trend towards incorporating significant amounts of glass in the cellar enclosure. Advancements in glass technology provide excellent thermal performance and effective UV light filtration. This innovation has enabled wine cellars to be located in central areas of the home, enhancing both their aesthetic and social value. Revel has incorporated new materials in its designs, from a wide range of hardwoods to steel, chrome, acrylic and more to give his clients options unavailable anywhere else.
Today you will also find them crafting humidity-controlled cigar boxes to safely store 40 cigars, personalized gift boxes for whiskey and bourbon lovers and other projects that keep them thinking out of the box. Whatever project they undertake, be assured that they will have looked at it from every angle and perspective and not take it out until it is fully baked and ready to delight, much like the wine that started it all. ☐
www. revelcellars.com
Leave a Reply