Where real estate prices are going may be up for debate but for some it’s definitely a cellar’s market. Wine cellar, that is.

“We’re not drinking Budweiser at football games anymore,” says Lee Zinser, a partner at Cellarworks, a wine cellar consulting firm in Brooklyn Heights, NY. For grape enthusiasts who know vintages like they know their kids’ birthdates and are on a first-name basis with their local wine merchants, a wine rack just doesn’t cut it.

Wine expert Jeff Cox, author of “Cellaring Wines: A Complete Guide to Selecting, Building and Managing Your Wine Collection” (Storey Publishing, 2003), says it’s time to consider a wine cellar if you have cases spilling out of your closets or “realize that you like well-aged wines.”

In fact, wine cellars aren’t just places to hold wines. They’re places to age them. Selection is highest and prices at their lowest at the time of release. Let bottles mature in a wine cellar and by the time they hit their peak, some could be worth ten times their original price. “It’s like buying wines at a futures price,” says Cox.

For wine collectors without the room or inclination to build a private cellar, companies like The Wine Cellarage in the Bronx offer climate-controlled storage for a monthly per-case fee. There are also off-the-shelf, free-standing cooling systems. The GE Monogram Wine Vault, released last summer, stores more than 1,000 bottles and comes with wine management system software.

But for serious collectors, there’s no substitute for a built-to-order wine cellar. They run the gamut from no-frills DYI versions to well-appointed models with exotic hardwoods, custom mosaics and techy innovations like fingerprint-reader security systems. Cox, who built his own wine cellar at his Sonoma County, CA. home, calls the aesthetics window dressing. “Would I love to have a cellar built underground into the side of a hill with a thick oaken door and a giant key, drain in the floor, electric service and beautiful bins? Sure—when I get a spare $35,000 or $40,000.”

Actually, add another zero.

Cellarworks’ Lee Zinser says the budgets on most of his projects “exceed $100,000 pretty easily” and can top a half-million dollars. Clients are attracted to the company’s cellar-as-entertainment philosophy. These cellars, often built adjacent to home theaters and big open bars, are designed to draw people inside and “to the far end of the cellar. You can’t just open a door, grab a bottle, turn around and leave. You have to walk past the bottles, so it becomes a real event,” Zinser says.

A recent Cellarworks-designed project in Old Westbury, NY, features 2,500-year-old stone floors imported from a Jerusalem plaza, walls made of ground marble with a Venetian plaster finish and reclaimed, wormy butternut woods. Price tag: $200,000.

But does it really matter if the floors are ancient stone imports or Pergo?
The key is creating the ideal environment to age wines properly. Zinser says that involves insulations systems, vapor barrier envelopes and mold inhibitors. “We try to emulate how wine was stored in the great chateaus 200 to 300 years ago.”

Vibrations are an often overlooked aspect of wine storage, he says. Vacuums systems, home theaters and appliances threaten the aging process. “Vibrations add energy to the wine,” Zinser explains, causing it to mature at an inappropriate rate.

Temperature is another potential enemy. While many say 55 degrees Fahrenheit is ideal, Zinser argues it’s not so much the number as it is temperature fluctuation. Wine stored at a stable 55, 57 or 58 degrees is “better than a wine cellar fluctuating between 55 and 58 over a year’s period, even though both numbers are considered a safe range. We don’t want a range in a wine cellar.”

Jimmy Sunshine, an owner of Post Wines, a Long Island fixture, says he developed an affinity for fine wines while traveling overseas for business 20 years ago. One sip of an old-vine Australian Shiraz and, “I knew there was a love affair.”

After years of collecting wines, Sunshine converted a basement bedroom in his Syosset home into a climate-controlled wine cellar. He gutted the 10 x 11-foot room, put up Wonderboard panels, sealed the walls and installed redwood racking, which can accommodate about 3,000 bottles.

What was the impetus to build the cellar? “One day you realize you have too much wine to not have it properly stored,” he says.

For Sunshine, it’s not just about the wine. It’s about the experience. “When I go downstairs, there’s a certain rhythm to the whole process of selecting the wines. The feel of the bottles. The way the cool air hits you. Every sense is touched. I even love the smell of the wood racking. It makes me think of the wine to come.”

Sunshine bought wines throughout the 1990s, sometimes paying between $75 and $105 for bottles than now go for $350 to $800 each—if they’re available at all.  “I look at the wine cellar and think, ‘I can’t believe I had the foresight to build this room and collect the wines I like to drink. We drink the best wines money could buy 15 yeas ago.”