A Love That Runs Deep : Wine: Collecting has given some Orange County residents a reason for unique home improvement. Now their cellars hold vintage treasures.

If you’re looking in on Glenn Dassoff at his San Clemente home and you can’t find him anywhere, head for the stairs and listen for the sound of clinking bottles. It’s a good bet he’s downstairs visiting his wine.

It’s not far off the mark to say that, for Dassoff, the sauna-size wine cellar is something the house happens to be built around. If it weren’t for the cellar (it was built by the previous owner of the house) he probably would be living somewhere else. It was the little temperature-controlled room beneath the stairs that made Dassoff decide--immediately--that this was the house he wanted.

Dassoff is one of a relatively small group of Orange County residents whose passion for wine has become both a substantial investment and a reason for unique home improvement.

These wine devotees are not merely avid tasters and aficionados who can decipher a restaurant wine list and know which bottle to serve with the meat and the fish. Their love for the grape has made them collectors--not of one or two cases, but hundreds and even thousands of bottles that many of them keep in lavishly stocked private wine cellars.

For most collectors, their pursuit lies somewhere between a hobby and an obsession. It requires specialized knowledge, specialized equipment and, certainly, money. But, like the wine itself, it also requires time and patience. And in that respect, most collectors’ backgrounds are similar.

Bob Currie was still flying fighter aircraft for the Navy in Northern California when, he said, he began to “learn the difference between white and red.” Both Currie and his wife, Brenda, had been raised in the South, where, he said, wine had not been a part of the typical meal.

However, when Currie left the Navy for Harvard Law School, he and his wife went to more dinners, gatherings and tastings and continued to learn from knowledgeable friends. By the time the Curries moved to Los Angeles in 1967 after Bob’s graduation, they decided to begin collecting seriously.

“We collected very slowly then,” he said. “Just a few bottles of this and a few bottles of that.”

At first, said Curry, he stored his fledgling collection in a crawl space beneath the house. It kept the wine cool but somewhat inaccessible. However, after the Curries moved to their present home in Newport Beach, they decided to build a proper wine cellar.

They chose a spot behind the house and built a wooden structure that looks, from the outside, like a large storage shed. Inside, however, it was fitted with diamond-shaped wall shelves--each capable of holding one case of wine--and the requisite ceiling-mounted electric refrigerator/fan unit that keeps the interior temperature hovering around 55 degrees. The floor is lined with brick, and light comes from a pair of hanging antique lamplighter’s lanterns.

Currie estimated that lining the walls are between 3,500 and 4,000 bottles, many of which he obtained in the mid-70s when a crash in the wine market allowed collectors and others to snatch up large quantities of wine and unusually low prices.

Will the Curries drink it all? Probably not. Curry said that his collection has grown to the point that some of the older wine, which he has kept for several years, has turned and will probably be thrown out (he said he intends to enter each bottle and vintage year into his home computer, to avoid such oversights in the future). The rest, however, should find its way to the table. Currie said he and his wife share a bottle of wine at dinner nearly every evening.

Dozens of labels from those bottles have found their way to the ceiling of the Currie wine cellar as decorations. Brenda said that whenever a label strikes her as particularly beautiful or unusual, she removes it from the bottle and pastes it to the ceiling. Hundreds of corks, too, have been collected in a large basket in the cellar, and many of them have been used to decorate the inside of the door, which is labeled cave au vin.

“I don’t know anyone who really enjoys wine who doesn’t collect some, and who doesn’t have some sort of storage facility for it,” said Currie. “Generally, people who like wine tend to buy more than they’re going to drink that night or that week. I buy a lot less now than I used to buy, and I buy better wines now. I don’t need the quantity.”

And there is another appeal. Wine, in a sense, is history, and a wine cellar provides a kind of liquid chronology to the life of the owner.

“You can look through the cellar and know when you bought certain bottles and why you bought them,” said Currie.

Occasionally, collectors exchange wine. If one decides to sell off a part of his collection, he will probably find buyers among his circle.

That, in part, is how Phil Lyons augmented his collection. Lyons, a real estate investor who lives in one of the most recognizable houses in Orange County--it is the one on Newport Beach’s Harbor Island with a lighthouse jutting from the center--said he built his collection up over the last two years partly from acquisitions from the collections of fellow enthusiasts.

“What I was looking for,” he said, “was someone who had a somewhat elaborate collection, or a group of people whom I could buy wines from that were primarily the Bordeaux in the 1960s and ‘70s vintages.”

And he did, mostly among the 40 members of the 38-year-old Orange County Wine and Food Society, of which Lyons is also a member and--like Currie--a former chairman. Most members of the society, said Lyons, collect wines, and their eyes are always cocked for sales of their favorite vintages.

“You might hear about a good first-class cellar that someone’s selling,” said Lyons. “It can be an estate sale, or a person may have more wines of a certain age group than he’s going to be able to drink before they turn. Things like that. I really was fortunate in that I acquired part of my collection from longtime friends.”

He has been collecting wines for about 10 years, but Lyons said he didn’t begin to amass a truly substantial collection until about 18 months ago. His cellar now contains “in excess of 2,000 bottles that, in total, may be worth as much as $200,000.”

Like Dassoff, Lyons enjoys disappearing into his cellar, content to putter among the bottles. But in Lyons’ cellar, there is also scenery.

Located in the basement of the lighthouse, the cellar was formerly a laundry room. When Lyons remodeled the house, he had it lined with racks to hold both individual bottles and cases (the triangular shelves are double-deep and can hold several bottles at a time). Under a hanging lamp in the center of the room is a large butcher block table, and on one side are a set of cabinets for glasses and hardware.

The wooden cabinet doors are finished with hand-carved scenes depicting the winemaking process, and the ceiling molding all around the cellar is hand-carved with grape vines. Over the door leading to the cellar are carved the words In Vino Veritas (In Wine Truth).

“It’s fun to take your friends down there and kind of touch and feel and taste,” said Lyons.

Dassoff is also fond of trundling down to the cellar with friends, although a few of them may have to stand out in the hall.

Dassoff is somewhere in the wine collecting middle ground--with a substantial collection, but one that’s not yet ready for a public wine storage facility. His cellar could easily be mistaken for an indoor sauna if the racks and wine were removed, but he says the little room can hold about 900 bottles (there are about 700 there now).

Like Currie, Dassoff is an attorney who got much of his education about wine when he lived near UC Berkeley in a large house with several other students, some of whom were knowledgeable about wines.

“They were more like obsessed,” he said. “I acquired a taste for beer in college like everyone else, but when I got into law school, I got into wine tasting. We’d taste wine about three times a week at dinners. They’d go to 2 a.m. We’d buy these old BV ’74 cabernets for about $8. Now they’re worth about $200. They’re considered one of the great vintages of the century.”

The old college group--now grown to about 30 friends--still gathers every two years in Northern California for several rounds of wine tastings and recollections of their university days when wine discovery was new.

“Back then if we found something fantastic,” said Dassoff, “we’d be rolling on the floor, doing somersaults, acting like little kids. There’s nothing as much fun as getting a group of people together who enjoy wine and opening a few good bottles.”

Some bottles, however, remain in the rack, turned a half turn faithfully every couple of years. They are the rarities, the prizes that require the grandest of occasions to open. And, say most collectors, they will probably be opened if they are not sold, for many wines are considered investments. Dassoff’s most expensive bottle, for instance, a ’66 Chateau Haut-Brion would sell, he estimates, for at least $500. Another bottle that is just slightly less expensive, a ’68 BV, he will probably drink someday. It is, he said, his favorite.

“Everything here appreciates,” he said. “It’s incredible. In 20 years, who knows?”

But, he said, it isn’t necessary to take out a second mortgage on the house to start a collection.

“I’ve been doing this for about 13 years,” he said, “and I think you can build a fabulous collection on about $200 a year.”

For Dassoff, the bottles mean more than money, however.

“I keep them for memories,” he said. “Part of the joy is coming down here and looking at it and being surprised, thinking, ‘Gee, I really do have that ’74 Heitz Cellar.’ ”

How to get started

Thinking of starting a serious wine collection? Here are a few tips from Dean Asbury, the manager of advertising in the wine department of Hi-Time Cellars of Costa Mesa, Orange County’s largest wine shop:

--If you plan on being truly committed, you’ll need to spend between $500 and $1,000 a year. Figure on between $30 and $40 per bottle.

--Buy mostly red wines. White wines don’t age well.

--best buys today likely are the ’88 Bordeaux, the higher end ‘85, ’87 and ’90 California cabernets and the ’88 and ’89 burgundys. If you’re a white wine fan, go with white burgundy. In California wines, the best investment right now probably is Opus 1.

--Buy wines that will age to drinkability within about five years and others that will mature later. You’ll want that combination in your cellar. That way, ideally, you’ll always have wine ready to drink.

--Get started now. The wine market is suffering a glut and better deals are available. Also, the dollar is gaining against the French franc, which can make French wines easier to buy.

--Once your cellar begins to fill, keep an active inventory. Many wines become undrinkable because they’re forgotten and held too long.