4 minute read
Liquid Goldmine
By PENDLE HARTE
Wine storage might not be the most exciting subject for grape enthusiasts, but a visit to the UK’s largest underground wine store is a rare treat
Descending 150 steps doesn’t sound like a big enough deal to require a self-rescuer. (What even is a self-rescuer?) But here we are, descending this long, straight slope slowly and carefully in single file, each of us obediently carrying a mandatory self-rescuer. You can’t be too careful, 100 feet below ground. Next to us is a railway track; the feeling is part theme-park ride, part post-apocalyptic survival situation, part disused tube station. We’re entering a Wiltshire mine, but the bounty here is wine, not the area’s original stone. For more than 30 years, the million square foot Octavian Vaults in Corsham, 10 miles northeast of Bath, have been home to around two billion pounds’ worth of the world’s finest wines, owned by a secretive mix of global collectors and wine dealers. We have come, as the collectors do, to visit the wine.
The UK’s biggest wine store is a littleknown entity, shrouded in mystery and unremarkable at street level. Entrance is heavily restricted (unless of course you are visiting your own wine) because of the security concerns connected with the super rich, and the potential risk of bottle-smashing. Wine collecting is a serious business – and while it’s relatively easy to get excited about the grapes, the chateaux and the drinking, the issue of wine storage is not something that generally sparks much joy. But wine storage is a very big deal and much rides on it – because the risks are potentially enormous. Who’d risk spoiling a fine wine through fluctuating temperatures or too much humidity? Wine needs the right conditions in order to age well – plus, in order for bottles to retain their value as well as their quality, there needs to be proof that they have been stored properly. With a constant temperature of 13 degrees and a humidity rating of 80%, these mine conditions are, happily, perfect for wine. Huge fans maintain the temperature so there is very little fluctuation. Careful lighting is pitched not to contribute to ageing the wine, and any vibrations are kept to an absolute minimum so as not to disturb it. We pass whole pallets stacked with crates of Petrus. There’s a mind-bending quantity of wine here and it’s susceptible to trends – 10 years ago it was Bordeaux, then came Burgundy, then Italian and Champagne. Now whisky is on the rise.
Wine comes down the slope in a railway cart and is ferried around in electric vehicles, because the space is vast. Corridors beyond corridors extend into the distance; the fear of getting lost is real, as is the fear of a powercut – though of course there are generators, and staff here know their way around. Security is tight (being caught with a corkscrew is a disciplinary offence) but the biggest risk here is fire (lighters are banned too). Mine regulations apply here and plans for rescuing stock if the worst happens are extensive.
Somewhere in these underground vaults is a single bottle of whisky worth £1.5m, and insurance is vital, at market values, which need to be assessed regularly. Giles Burke-Gaffney, buying director for Justerini & Brooks, is passionate about wine (he claims to have tasted more than 30,000 wines in the last five years) and mostly he is busy looking for the next big thing, but he’s keen on storage too. Because “great wines have nuance, which can very easily be lost”. For him, the most important thing when buying wine and storing it is to make sure your name is on the case. Which may sound obvious, he says, but some dealers might simply have an allocation of 20 cases of something and maintain a list, somewhere, of their 20 owners. This is not the same as having an actual case of wine with your name on it. What happens when one bottle in those 20 cases is dropped and smashed? Whose bottle was it? Or if a wine dealer goes bust and the cases aren’t named, who knows they’re yours? When wine is bought and sold without ever leaving the warehouse, things can get complicated. Administratively, labelling cases is laborious, but for serious collectors, it’s reassuring to know that your wine is really your wine. (However, it’s unlikely that an individual’s collection will be stored together. Wine is stored in zones by dealer; Justerini & Brooks, for example, has 120,000 cases here). The quarry has an interesting past – as a source of Bath Stone, its output was the beautiful golden stone that built the city of Bath (as well as, more surprisingly, the town hall in Cape Town). In the 1930s, ownership transferred to the War Office and since then, it has been used variously for MOD munitions and Navy spares storage, attempted mushroom cultivation and as a bunker. During the 1960s, there was an (unsuccessful and bizarre) attempt to sell nuclear bunker timeshares here. The mine has often been used as a film location and traces of the Guns of Navarone remain today in the form of a sentry box and a notice, in German, requiring passports to be shown.
Walking around for a couple of hours, we have still barely seen anything of the enormous mine, which is about as big as ten Wembley pitches. There are more than a million cases of wine here and it’s an intriguing place to visit. But unless you open an account, there’s little chance of being allowed in for a snoop.
