An Imperfect Cellar

Last week, I ran an errand through a half-empty strip mall; retail remains a challenging pursuit. With one-click shopping, Sears and J.C. Penney have vanished, but certain business models endure. For some—I’m talking about me—joy exists in wandering the aisles. Flanked by empty real estate, a woodworking store thrived with dozens huddled around a carver doing his thing, bringing a cabinet to life on the baking, cracked sidewalk. I’d qualify him as an artist, far better than I ever could be. He used dozens of tools all having their own place.

Years back, I took up the hobby but tried to keep the gadget count low. I owned a miter saw, leveraged an old-fashioned woodworking kit, and the tried-and-true Dremel. As an aside, I developed a love for staining wood—there is a therapeutic quality to seeing the grain transform. Anyway, I loved it.

But I wasn’t this guy with dozens of tools. Instead of creating perfect joints, I landed on a different way to make frames. A box-within-a-box methodology. Heavy. Covered up mistakes a master might never consider. If not hung correctly, the solid oak bites into the drywall.

My entire office consists of these projects—shelving units, a chalkboard, and my desk. For the last, I found a massive oak struck by a bolt of lightning and contracted a lumberyard to mill it. This process isn’t as complicated as one might think to make the Wonderboy of Work. No fireworks. Or cheering crowds. This happens in my own imagination. That doesn’t make it a Wizarding Wand type of desk; it’s just overconstructed with a host of imperfections. A slight wobble. More than a handful of nicks. And a tanned leather hide covers a crack that wood filler can’t fix.

I cherish my time writing on it—this is my colosseum of story.

Just like the desk, I approached designing a wine cellar with the same whimsical embrace of imperfection. Yes, measuring the cost-benefit ratio, I should have bought the racks for a quarter of the price. But these were mine—heavy, stained to perfection. The solid oak portrayed a certain brute-force quality. During construction, I simply went where the wood took me. While crafting the first, I impulsively carved a quote into the wall mount. Nothing about wine, but timeless sayings—one a Walt Disney Imagineering favorite.

Joy happens with creation, especially when not having a preconceived destination—no matter the project.

As for my wine cellar, I never finished the full project, not as designed, which had a roadmap of 20 custom racks and a series of shelving units. Eventually, I considered—perhaps wrongly—what was I going to do with all this wine?

And a move to Music City left me with less space; basements aren’t practical in limestone-covered hill country. The ground isn’t the black gold of the Mid-West where someone can plant a shoe and a rubber tree blossoms. My tomatoes aren’t quite the same in these parts.

In the end, I scaled it down to five racks, each one stamped with a quote:

1. “Laughter is timeless, imagination has no age, dreams are forever.” Walt Disney 2. ”I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”* Thomas Edison 3. “Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.” Albert Einstein 4. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” Steve Jobs 5. “Life is short. Break the rules. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. Love Truly. Laugh uncontrollably. Never regret anything that makes you smile.” Mark Twain¹

When I finished Walt, I cellared a bottle of cabaret from Ridge Winery in California.² It’s a beautiful place. Go there, you won’t regret the trip. And I promised not to open Dionysus’ treasure until my son’s graduation. A surviving bottle from my overscoped consulting project. As an aside, I also have another make and model for his college graduation, amongst other milestones.

I didn’t mark the exact date of purchase, an oversight, but I built the racks when he was three or so—the garage was my refuge. So, let’s say this bottle has been hiding in the dark thirteen years running. What’s more entertaining is that it outlasted the racks. I moved over eight years ago, which means Ridge’s Cabaret slumbered in the oak for six years, made a trip south, and hid in the back pantry. The racks didn’t work in the new digs and were either tucked away in an attic or recycled into other efforts.

But the bottle remained.

And after my son pranced across the graduation stage on a near-perfect night—the heavens parted and pushed the humidity and lightning aside—I somehow forgot about the bottle. With everyone gone, I stumbled across it by accident, probably rifling through the cupboard for a sugar fix.

Later that night, I uncorked and decanted the bottle. Wrong turns spring up with any project, especially considering forethought and time.

In this case, a bad cork, mostly. And it was pretty brittle. Or I aged the bottle too long before letting go. The label mentioned a range of dates for optimal drinking. But how do you know? There was a brief moment when I considered selling.

Now, let’s talk economics.

In the restaurant business, meals have tight margins, and the money is made in the cellar. Here, I believe I paid about 50 bucks. Before opening, I calculated the current online value, which ranged considerably.

• The annualized rate of return, if valued at $279 over 13 years, is approximately 14.14% per year.
• If worth $350, the annualized rate is approximately 16.15% per year.
• If I swindled somebody for $500, approximately 19.38% per year.

At face value, this appears to be a solid investment—who wouldn’t want an annualized return of near 20%? But to quote Avengers Infinity War, “What did it cost?” You see, I’m not the greatest builder of wine racks. But what I can say is that I don’t skimp on wood. The material cost, time to build and stain, and installation eat into the profit margin. Also, I had to transport the bottle mid-life, not to mention the other learnings.

At times, I joked about taking a private equity approach—buying the asset, stripping out costs, then flipping it for profit. Like Red Lobster, I could have sold my pantry and rented back the wine rack space before reselling at a markup. But that missed the point entirely. This bottle’s value couldn’t be measured in dollars alone.

Later that night, I saw my kid snoozing on the couch. And my memory flashed back to when I bought that bottle of wine. I remembered all the pictures I’ve taken of him, from an early age. Each trip. Every moment—most good, some hard but never bad. Yes, blink and you’ll miss it because life comes at you fast. Sure, the bottle rested for years. The cork broke. Yet, as I watched the stars twinkling above, it was the best glass of wine I ever had. Despite missteps with the saw, not knowing how to build a cellar, or how to choose the proper vintage, I don’t regret a thing.

Congratulations graduates. And more importantly, best wishes to all the parents out there. It’s your moment, too. Onward.

Footnotes