Wine-cellar seller keeps it cool

Public Record, The, Aug 03, 2004 by Kleinschmidt, Janice

Some entrepreneurs turn their hobbies into businesses. Bob Hamilton turned his business into a hobby. Since getting involved in making and selling wine cellars, he installed one in his own home and started learning about wine.

A Minnesota native, Hamilton spent many years in the wholesale lumber business in Iowa. While looking for another product to carry, he happened on prebuilt saunas made by a company in California. So lie added saunas to the line of lumber lie sold oil business trips throughout Iowa.

In the early 1970s. Hamilton and his wife, Ardyth. vacationed in the Coachella Valley, "My wife had arthritis. so she enjoyed the weather the few days we were here," he says. Then when the sauna manufacturer's distributorship in San Diego became available, Hamilton bought it and the couple moved to La Quinta in 1972. "I had a shop here and I traveled back and forth twice a week," he says. He called the retail store Viking Sauna of the Desert. "Then the people I was representing sold out, so I lost the distributorship in San Diego and moved everything up here," he says. "Then I really started all over again."

The sauna company had expanded into the wine-cellar business by replacing sauna heaters with refrigeration and benches with bottle racks. As the Coachella Valley grew, Hamilton's business grew and he branched into custom wine storage. A self-taught designer, he still designs custom wine cellars and cool rooms by hand. Besides himself, he has a staff of three carpenters.

About 80 percent of Hamilton's business is making and selling custom and prebuilt wine cellars. "This isn't a good market here weatherwise for saunas," he says.

The largest wine storage job he's worked on was Tim and Edra Blixseth's 5,000-bottle, underground wine cellar in Rancho Mirage. The minimum size for a wine cellar is about 100 bottles. "If anybody stores wine, 100 bottles is not very many, he says. His own holds 350 hot des, but his wife, who passed away last August, did a lot of baking and kept flour and other baking supplies in it.

About half of Hamilton's clients are custom-home builders and half are homeowners wanting to add wine storage to their existing homes. Storage can mean a self-contained unit or custom, built-in room. "Sometimes we convert a coat closet," Hamilton says.

After running shops in Indio and Bermuda Dunes, Hamilton moved his operation to Country Club Business Park near Country Club Drive and Washington Street in Palm Desert. Sample wine racks and refrigeration units are displayed in the front part of his 3,000-square-foot space. They include the Desert Cellar, which resembles a wood-encased refrigerator, that Hamilton designed seven years ago for storing wine in a garage. Three-inch-thick walls and magnetic gasket seals help maintain a cool temperature.

Open racks show options such as holders for standard wine bottles, champagne bottles and magnums, as well as bins for odd-sized bottles and slanted racks for displaying special labels. Photos show completed jobs, including a room with wrap-around racks that employs a library ladder to access bottles close to the 14-foot ceiling.

As romantic as an underground cellar is, Hamilton says it's rare in the desert and the dining room is a favorite place for wine storage. "Some people like to show their wine and put in glass doors," he says. Hamilton often works with companies that etch glass or make stained glass to complement oak and mahogany cabinetry.

Although he used to make saunas and wine cellars with redwood, when the wood became expensive - and, at one point, unavailable at any price Hamilton turned to cedar. "Cedar is Just as good," he says, explaining that its porosity allows it to hold a temperature - making it a good choice for saunas as well as wine storage. Cedar also does not stain easily. Instead of the aromatic cedar used to line closets, Hamilton uses western red cedar from the Northwest Canada, Washington and Oregon.

While there are local cabinet-makers who also make wine cellars, Hamilton's specializes in them. And he's riding the wave of the valley's boom in home construction. "We've been growing all the time," he says.