 |
|
|
|
Photograph by Paul Myers
Larry Stepek (left) and Michael Kay are the owners of Cave Masters, a wine storage facility in Old Town in Los Gatos. The environment, temperature and humidity are designed to mimic a cave.
|
Cave Masters offers a safe place for wine collections
By Suzanne Cristallo
The taste of wine can be aggressive, angular and brawny. While some people like to taste the wine and talk the language, there are others who simply amass it in huge quantities. Serious collectors of the treasured stuff require a storage area far beyond what their basements can provide. That's where Cave Masters comes in.
Just opened, it's a full-service wine storage and online sales business on the lower level of Old Town in Los Gatos. The business is unique, at least locally anywhere south of Marin County, and was created out of a need that partners Larry Stepek and Michael Kay saw in the specialized world of wine collecting.
What they do is store wine for collectors in a 3,000-square-foot, climate-controlled environment they have built, hold wine tastings in private homes or outside facilities, sell wholesale imported wine unavailable to local dealers over the Internet and locate special orders. "We'll even take six bottles out of storage for a customer's party and deliver it to their home," Stepek says.
Stepek, whose day job is managing Los Gatos' Cafe Marcella while he does the marketing, promotion and conceptualization for Cave Masters in his off hours, lived in an apartment when he started collecting wines. "I had no space under my apartment," he notes, "so I saw the need for a storage place."
At the time, Stepek, 48, and Kay, 49, were co-workers at California Cafe, where Stepek was general manager and Kay was the regional manager. "I always wondered how we might use the space below the cafe," Stepek recalls. A change in ownership of the restaurant chain two years ago prompted the men to leave. Stepek managed the Plumed Horse in Saratoga for a while, then came to Cafe Marcella.
Because they enjoyed working together, the two decided to start the wine storage business, with Kay serving as president and operations manager. They signed a lease for the basement space 13 months ago.
Then the wait began. "We had to wait for the mall owners (Federal Realty and Investment) to finish construction on other projects--which happened to be more lucrative--before they got to us," Stepek notes. Without certain phases of the work completed, permits could not be issued.
When work finally did begin, Kay was there full time, making certain the specialized needs of their business were properly incorporated. The result is a place to please any "hardcore collector."
A cooling system designed to send an alert in the event of a failure maintains a temperature of 55 degrees and a humidity of 61 percent. Lockers are made of unfinished wood. Collectors understand that paint, lacquers and varnish give off fumes that can seep through a cork and affect a stored wine over time.
In the short time it has been open, the facility has taken in some 200 cases sent by collectors who heard about the facility through word of mouth. That's enough to keep it in a "break-even" status, according to Stepek, who says their storage rates run $1 a case for long term (a year or more) or $2 for short term.
There is a vast area in the facility left open, primarily to accommodate the anticipated shipment of 700 cases at a time that must be moved on pallet jacks needing over twice the space of an average 36-aisle.
Why 700 cases, a seemingly whopping amount of wine for an individual?
"Actually, if a guy is a serious collector, that might even be on the low side," explains Kay. "He needs stuff to trade, and wine can appreciate 10 percent or better. It's a good investment--a huge asset." He likens it to the owning of a vintage car. If a collector has a vintage Lafite--a first growth Bordeaux--he'll want to get his hands on a lot and keep it safe, he says.
Cave Masters, 50 University Ave., Los Gatos, 408.358.0287 or michael@cavemasters.com.
|
|
|
|
Los Gatos, California Since 1881
