Wall Street Journal Article Focuses on Self-Storage Wine Storage

There’s an interesting article in The Wall Street Journal this week about the rising demand for wine storage. This could be an opportunity for self-storage facilities who made the investment in wine storage areas. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

America is a nation of wine lovers—U.S. sales topped $30 billion in 2007, according to the Wine Institute—but we’re also a nation of wine hoarders, as evidenced by the number of wine-storage facilities.

Enterprising companies offer lovers of the grape a place to stash those precious wines in secure, temperature-controlled settings worthy of a four-figure bottle of Bordeaux. There’s a reason for all the fuss: Wines not stored at the proper temperature (typically 55 to 58 degrees) or in the proper environment (somewhere dark) can easily go bad. Many storage facilities take service a step further, from helping collectors catalog their bottles to accepting shipments directly from out-of-town wineries or wine sellers. To see if such storage businesses live up to the hype, we visited four facilities of various sizes, styles and prices.

International Wine Storage in Miami offered some of the lowest rates—starting at just $22 per month to rent a shelf that can hold up to 12 cases (or 144 bottles). If you’re looking for storage with a certain upscale pedigree, you might be in the wrong place. The facility is part of a much bigger, all-purpose self-storage firm, replete with a loading area where used books and office furniture were on sale.
Read the rest of the article in The Wall Street Journal.

Add comment March 5th, 2010