In wine cellar industry, form meets function at Washington Valley Cellars

• Wine cellar designer Jay Rosen has built hundreds of wine cellars since launching Washington Valley Cellars in Martinsville 12 years ago
• Custom-designed to fit each home, wine cellar styles can range from Old World to high-end wood paneling, stonework and ultramodern designs featuring metal and glass
• The growing prevalence of wine shops and wine bars along with increased promotion of wine’s health benefits have increased U.S. demand for in-home wine cellars
• “It’s my happy place,” customer and independent wine consultant Kristy Niro said of the rustic, 3,000-bottle wine cellar Rosen built in her Rumson home in 2011

In some ways, 59-year-old master wine cellar designer and builder Jay Rosen can thank the 1980s stock market crash and a subsequent back injury for opening the door to a successful new career.

Back then, as a 28-year-old with an MBA, a real estate license and a knack for construction, “I met a lot of builders, borrowed some money, bought a lot and built a couple of spec houses,” the Teaneck native and current Martinsville resident said.

“But then the market crashed, a back injury sidelined me for eight months, and I started doing renovations and finishing basements instead.”

One thing would soon lead to another. A wine lover since his college days at Rutgers University, “a couple of wine shops I frequented knew that I was into construction and asked me if I wanted to build wine cellars for their customers. I knew nothing about wine cellars at the time, but I read up about them and built my first one in 1992.”

Though he continued to do other types of construction work over the next decade, word circulated about Rosen’s skill in building wine cellars, and by the early 2000s, he and an associate with expertise in carpentry decided to focus their business solely on that niche. With that, Washington Valley Cellars was born.

“I have a good business sense and I do all of the design work and selling, and my team does all of the building,” Rosen said of his now four-person collaborative, which handles everything from carpentry to plumbing, masonry, electrical work, insulation, refrigeration systems, tile work and more. “We handle the entire project from soup to nuts, and I couldn’t do it without them.”

Rosen’s finished products have earned a reputation for being a wine lover’s dream — wine cellars uniquely designed to a person’s type of home, style preferences, wine collection and space — and his work has garnered praise in everything from House Magazine to Wine Spectator. Typically taking four to six weeks to complete, “we can build a wine cellar around any number of themes, from an Old World style to high-end wood paneling, stonework, sleek and ultramodern designs involving metal and glass, or something more rustic,” Rosen said. “The only limit is your imagination.”

Message in a bottle

Over 20 years and 500 wine cellars since his first project, Rosen admits that he was ahead of the curve in spotting America’s growing fascination with wine, wine culture and wine storage.

“With all the media promoting the health benefits of red wine and the presence of more wine shops and wine bars than ever before, wine is more indoctrinated into the fabric of society than it was 20 to 30 years ago, and more young people are getting into it, as well,” he said.

At the same time, he added, those market drivers converged with a growing desire by homeowners to customize their living spaces to accommodate their hobbies or possessions, leading to an increasing demand for features such as high-end closets, sophisticated home theaters, and wine cellars. As a result, Rosen said, “the wine cellar market has widened and has more fans overall.”

In starting a project, Rosen will collaborate with a builder in a new construction scenario or “work to find an optimal space and fit into what’s there” in an existing house, often navigating his way through closets, basements and the hazards of low-hanging ceilings, wiring and duct work to identify a suitable space for a wine cellar that’s free of noise and can accommodate the necessary insulation and vapor barriers to contain conditioned air and prevent the infiltration of warm, moist air that can cause mold and mildew.

In all cases, “it’s about getting to know the homeowner, understanding who they are and what their theme is, and honing in on their wants and needs,” Rosen said. “Then I’ll sit with a glass of wine and sketch out the room to try to make it aesthetically pleasing and functional,” he said, noting that Autocad capabilities enable him to show customers a virtual preview of their cellar and share his vision.

The price tag for his handiwork? Rosen’s custom wine cellars range from $13,000 to $15,000 for the smallest (400 to 500 bottles) to over $100,000 for cellars that can hold thousands of bottles and feature more sophisticated design elements such as stone walls, rounded corners and porcelain tile. His biggest project involved a wine cellar large enough to house 40,000 bottles and his most expensive project so far — nearly $180,000 — involved excavation under a home to create space for a wine cellar and tasting room.

While Rosen said that most of his customers hail from New Jersey and the metropolitan area, he and his team have tackled projects from over a dozen states nationwide and customers typically fall into three categories — “older customers who are downsizing and need to house their existing collection into smaller space, people who are just getting into wine collecting, and those who have lots of wine but store it in a haphazard way and need to organize and centralize it,” he said.

A happy place

A creative designer with a warm and welcoming approach, Rosen has amassed a large fan club.

“Jay builds fabulous wine cellars that are so high-quality and innovative,” said Gary Dinardo, a 60-year-old real estate and property management professional for whom Rosen built a 1,000-bottle wine cellar off the dining room of his Warren home in 2012. “I’ve been drinking and collecting wine since the 1970s and had built an old cellar myself in our basement in 1980, but the professional cellar Jay built us is so artistic, fits our house so well, and looks like you’re walking into a custom wine shop.

“I can finally see what I have and everything is laid out and displayed in such an organized way. I always wanted this and it’s so nice to go in there and pick out a bottle of wine now. It’s like my dream come true.”

Fellow customer Kristy Niro, 45, an independent wine consultant and Rumson resident, wholeheartedly agrees. Three years ago, Rosen worked with the builder of her new, Old World European-style home to design a rustic wine cellar in her basement that would accommodate 3,000 bottles. The result has become one of the most important and inspiring parts of her house.

“Jay cares so much about his customers and works to create an optimal environment for each and every one of them,” she said. “He’s so down-to-earth and generous with his time and is very focused on each project and ensuring his customer’s maximum enjoyment and satisfaction.”

As someone who loves to cook, share wine, and educate about wine, “our wine cellar is beautiful and fills me with a sense of joy, excitement and enthusiasm,” Niro added. “It’s my happy place.”

For Rosen, whose own 5,200-bottle collection is contained in not one but two of his custom wine cellars, each unique project he completes is its own reward.

“I love starting from scratch, developing a design, tweaking and building it, and then going back and drinking a glass of wine with the customers in the new space and seeing how happy everyone is,” he said. In that respect, “it’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle, and I love it.”

For more information on Washington Valley Cellars in Martinsville, call 732-469-5558 or visit www.washingtonvalleycellars.com.