Customer Reviews

Living with Wine: Passionate Collectors, Sophisticated Cellars, and Other Rooms for Entertaining, Enjoying, and Imbibing

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The most impressive and awe-inspiring private wine cellars in the country are featured in this gem -- the stories, the photos, and of course the wine are spectacular and makes for a great "coffee table book" or conversation piece. This book will make a perfect addition to any wine collector's library -- whether you are looking for ideas for your own cellar or just like to see "how the other half lives." Perfect for the wine lover or those who simply love luxury and elegance.

For wine aficionados, this is the ultimate guide to create fabulous wine rooms that can rival the best of high end wine stores. To me, it will be a good guide for showing clients the possibilities of how to approach a wine room with commercial and residential applications. Definitely one for the wine connoisseur.

This book offers the wine lover a voyeuristic peek into thirty of the most extravagant and spectacular wine cellars in the United States. One cannot help but marvel at the grandeur of some of these rooms and the impressive wine collections contained therein. The stories behind the passionate wine collectors and their distinctive cellars is told by James Beard Award-winning wine writer, Alice Feiring, in conjunction with noted interior design and architecture writer, Samantha Nestor. The color photography of Andrew French is stunning and amplified by the large size of this volume.

The book is divided into five parts: the Entertaining Pair's Lair, the Gentlemen's Haven, the Sybarite's Sanctuary, the Modernist Refuge, and Urban Retreats and Inspiring Spaces. The size of most of these cellars indicates the zeal with which wine connoisseurs will pursue their collection. While most of the featured cellars royally display 2,000 to 3,000 bottles, more than enough wine for most imbibers, one mind-boggling cellar houses 60,000 bottles of fine wine.

Most readers can only dream about having such lavish cellars for their beloved wine collections. The book does not give any estimates of the cost of designing and building these eye-popping wine cellars, but clearly these architectural marvels came at a considerable expense, in some cases exceeding the value of the wines resting inside.

This work is a coffee table book at heart that will please those who delight in marveling at what extremes collectors will go to in displaying their beloved wines. It will be particularly appealing to those who find admiration in the creative designs that the owners and artisans display in these distinctive wine cellars. The volume may even stimulate readers to embark on their own wine cellar project.

Wine is such a wonderful life enhancing topic that why shouldn't there fabulous books written about this romantic subject. As the story goes, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou beside me sitting in the wilderness. If you like or love wine and are like me, than you have a tendency to look at all the new books that come out each year on the subject. It only takes a little bit of reading to develop an understanding of wine on a subject level that will blow you away and your friends with your new found knowledge.


This book is extraordinary addition to the wonderful books that have been written on the subject. It shows what can be done when a love of wine supplemented by a pocketful of cash can combine to develop a wine collector's wine cellar in the most dramatic way. The book is divided into five parts.


I) The Entertaining Pair's Lair

II) The Gentleman's Haven

III) The Sybarite's Sanctuary

IV) The Modernist Refuge

V) The Urban Retreats and Inspiring Spaces


Each section is devoted to an individual collection and the pictures are STUNNING. This is a book that you can go back to time after time. Unlike wine, this book will not age. The collections are timeless, and I find that on certain nights when it is cold outside, I can find refuge and fantasy in a book like this. Everything is tasteful in this book. The world elegant is very appropriate for this book is about beauty and lifestyle.


Anyone who collects wine is PASSIONATE about the subject, and such passion projects into their method of collection. As you enter these cellars, you are propelled into a different world. This book is about architects going wild into creativity and putting it into the designs they create for the wine connoisseurs. There are 30 different collections portrayed in 256 pages. You will find homes in Napa Valley, Boston's Back Bay, and the Hamptons of Long Island. There were two celebrity collections featured which included Ryan Seacreast of American Idol, and John Lasseter who founded Pixar Studios.


If you love wine, then you will love this book. Indulge your fantasy and go out and get yourself a copy. You might not be able to afford to build your own exotic wine cellar, but you can still imagine it, and thank you for reading this review.


Richard C. Stoyeck