Sometimes, a snowy day can inspire more than just building a snowman and sitting by the fire with a cup of hot cocoa afterwards.
That’s what happened to Neil Rohrbacker. A snow day instantly added a whole new direction to his business.
Most people take snow days off. Not this time. Neil had a client who was literally within walking distance from his home. He had to go to the man’s home to take some measurements for a project he was working on for his “Closets to Adore” business. So ignoring the twelve inches of snow on the roads, he walked up the hill and into a brand new world.
“I spent the afternoon there after taking all the measurements, just shooting the breeze with this couple as their kids are running around,” Neil explains. “As we were talking about my business, he said to me ‘check out my wine cellar.’ It was right off the kitchen and a really cool space. As he’s showing it to me, he casually said ‘you should totally do these.’’
And that’s how Wine Cellars to Adore was born.
Not a grand plan. Not a lifelong love affair with wine. A cool space on a cold day.
Neil is a mechanical engineer. Or at least, he had been, before launching his closet business about eleven years ago. He’d spent his career, a lifetime in manufacturing, sales, and software development, working for huge corporations, from pharmaceuticals to fragrances to diapers to Viacom and Verizon Wireless. So with a work transition looming and his wife with a major job that had her travelling the globe, he decided to pull back from that and look into another area built for a mechanical engineer - woodworking.
His Closets to Adore spreads across the entire Northeast. (It’s simply a closet business - think everything but kitchen and bathroom cabinets and closets.) Wine Cellars to Adore is strictly a local enterprise here in New Jersey. But the science behind it, well, that comes from France.
Before modern technology, the wines there - sort of a big thing in France - were stored in caverns, fifty feet below ground. That’s where the magic happens. Because if you go fifty feet down, it’s 55 degrees. With 50-70 percent humidity. Protected from light. And away from vibrations. All conditions optimal for fine wine storage.
Neil says that these are all the keys he’s learned about wine storage. And this technology-minded mechanical engineer has taken these principles and incorporated them into some really great spaces for today’s wine enthusiasts.
“This is storage that really runs the entire gamut,” says Jill Olinsky, a designer who straddles time between the Closets to Adore and the Wine Cellars to Adore businesses. “If you’re looking for just some simple racking or a full rebuild, new construction, with refrigeration, insulation, sheetrocking, humidity control, it’s just about what you’re looking for. Ultra contemporary to traditional. So if you’ve just got a couple of bottles of wine that you simply want a place to store and display, or wine is life to you, a serious collector who yearns for that optimal wine experience with every bottle, we take care of the science and the art to protect that investment you’ve made.”
And if you’re a wine enthusiast, you know how much an investment wine can be.
“The first time I was ever in a wine cellar, long before I got into the business, I was at the home of an expat from Europe,” Neil recalls. “In his wine cellar were stacks of cases of Bordeaux, I’d say about 10 cases, for each of his 3 kids from the year they were born. He’d been saving them for their weddings. This was years ago, before prices really skyrocketed, but nowadays, these can be somewhere around $1,500 per bottle. That’s $150,000 right there alone, so you really have to know what you’re doing to store them to keep that quality and value intact.”
But for those who love it, it’s money well spent.
“I always say people spend money the way they want to spend money. It’s about what they value and what’s important to them. For someone who’s a fisherman who goes bass fishing, he’ll have an $85,000 bass boat. You put your resources into what makes you happy.”
Wine Cellars to Adore is based in Madison, NJ. To see more of their work, visit their website at winecellarstoadore.com, or simply give them a call at 973-822-1212. If Closets to Adore is in your wheelhouse, that website is closetstoadore.com. Just don’t look for kitchens or bath renovations there. They don’t do those.