Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

August 29, 2012

Soup to Nuts: The cellar dwellers

Dining with the wine, not just drinking it, is a coming thing, as more restaurants set tables downstairs among the racks.

By Meredith Goad mgoad@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

The idea of using a wine cellar for purposes other than storing wine goes back a long way.

During Prohibition, for example, the wine cellar at the famous 21 Club in New York City was used as a speakeasy. The door to the cellar, hidden behind smoked hams and shelves filled with canned goods, could only be opened by inserting an 18-inch meat skewer through a crack in the wall.

The police were never able to find it.

Today, that cellar is used not only to store wine but to offer the restaurant's guests a special dining experience – a seven-course tasting dinner among the restaurant's thousands of bottles of wine, including the private collections of famous patrons such as Richard Nixon and Elizabeth Taylor. (You can see video of the famous wine cellar at www.21club.com.)

Opening wine cellars for private dining became a trendy thing to do during the 1990s, and now lots of restaurants around the country include it in their menu of options for private parties. In Boston, 15 Beacon Hotel, a luxury boutique hotel on Beacon Hill, offers a private dining room in a wine cellar with a 5th-century Roman mosaic and wines dating back to the 1700s.

A thorough hunt for wine cellar dining in Maine revealed only two options in this state, but they are two very different experiences. On the high end, there's the White Barn Inn & Spa in Kennebunkport, where guests using the wine cellar for private dining have ranged from former president George W. Bush to families with small children who don't want to disturb guests in the upstairs dining room.

If you prefer a more casual place that serves comfort food, Caiola's on Portland's West End calls its wine cellar dining room its "best kept secret," although the secret is getting out as more guests use the space for events such as birthday parties and marriage proposals.

 

ALL THE MARBLE

The wine cellar at the White Barn Inn was built in 1998 and seats 15 at a long, two-piece table made of Indian marble.

"The story goes it was one original piece of marble on the top that broke in transit," said Jonathan Cartwright, the Grand Chef Relais & Chateaux.

Seating includes both simple chairs and a long, J-shaped booth against the wall. Guests are surrounded by the inn's 7,000 bottles of wine, and they can gaze at a mural of Tuscany painted by local artist Judith Hardenbrook that was commissioned by the late former owner of the inn, Laurie Bongiorno. The floor is Italian marble.

While a jacket is required in the upstairs dining room, there's no dress code for the wine cellar. Guests can arrive discreetly through a back entrance, or find their way through the inn's kitchen to the cellar stairs.

"A lot of people comment how they like to walk through the kitchen to get here, and get a glimpse of the kitchen," Cartwright said. "We have a bakery down on this level as well, so they have to walk through the bakery area."

For a $150 surcharge, guests rent the wine cellar for large groups (tables larger than an eight-top are not allowed upstairs), small weddings, graduations and private meetings. Good guests who just want to get away for a while might be allowed to use the room without charge if it isn't already booked.

An evening in the wine cellar might begin upstairs with a cocktail reception at the piano in the bar. "Sometimes people want to start out by the pool and have cocktails, then come in here," Cartwright said.

The inn also holds the occasional wine dinner in the space.

(Continued on page 2)

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