Better with time: Wine Cellar Club hits 15 years

After a rough start, Wine Cellar Club on Murphy Avenue has become a popular storage shop, drawing clients from around the world.

It's 57 degrees Fahrenheit in Wine Cellar Club Inc., but that's just the right temperature for wine aficionados like owner Steven Greenberg who like to keep their valued collections nicely chilled.

Classical music can be heard throughout the Murphy Avenue cellar. The walls are coated with warm colors and passageways are lined with artwork, portraying wines, fruits and chateaus in France.

"I couldn't afford to do market research so I said, 'what would I want'? I thought if I like it others will like it," Greenberg said. "What you see here is me."

The 10,000 square-foot Wine Cellar Club opened April 1992, but didn't see its first client until June that year.

Fifteen years later, Greenberg's cellar is one of the largest and most popular full-service wine storage facilities in Orange County. His customer base ranges from Irvine resident to individuals throughout the United State. Some come from as far away as Spain, Singapore and Tokyo.

Greenberg's love affair with wine began at a young age, but it would take him years to turn his passion into his life's work.

His fascination was sparked at age 15 by James Bond, who drank wine – Bollinger to be exact – got the pretty girls and never seemed to get injured.

"I said, that's what I want to be when I grow up," he said.

One day in college he bought half a bottle of Beaujolais and a burger and fries from McDonalds – which was all he could afford. At home he took a salad bowl and filled it with ice for his wine. His father saw him and walked away scratching his head.

"I loved that wine," Greenberg said. "That started it."

At 22, he fell in love with wine all over again when he purchased a used, signed copy of Francis Lewis Gould's "My Life With Wine." He felt a pleasure in Gould's words, a feeling he would not feel again until he opened The Wine Cellar 25 years later.

Greenberg decided to open the cellar because he saw the accounting industry, in which he had built his career, begin to favor younger, inexpensive employees, he said.

"I'm pretty strong in real estate and I'm pretty strong in wine so I thought 'how I can do something that uses my talent,'" he said.

It took about six years for him to feel that he made the right decision.

"It took way, way longer than I thought," he said.

The business eventually took off and in 1999 he bought a second location on Murphy Avenue, right across the street from the original. His dream is to open more Wine Cellar Clubs in Southern California.

At the cellar, wine connoisseurs take inventory of their collection inside the labyrinth of the storage facility.

Jonathan Ta of Oakcreek was looking over his supply last Thursday. Ta began storing wine at Wine Cellar Club four years ago when he ran out of storage space at home. His collection began with about 60 bottles but now it has grown to about 1,000 bottles.

"I have seen other wine storage places elsewhere in the county and nothing comes close to what (Wine Cellar Club) provides with the security and cleanliness," Ta said. "My house is too small or else I would love to store at home," he added.

Greenberg estimates it takes $60,000 to $100,000 to build an in-home wine cellar, and that doesn't include the cost to keep it cool.

Jonathan Lukoff has collected wine since 1978. He began storing at home but eventually switched to public storage.

"It took up so much more electricity and so much noise that it made more sense to store it," Lukoff said. He has about 130 cases in storage.

Tables are set up throughout the facilities, with wine glasses, bottle openers, flickering candles and crackers to encourage client interaction.

Greenberg now runs the company with his significant other, Felicia Cochran, who joined the company 10 years ago.

To celebrate the business' 15th anniversary, he will host events each Saturday from April through June – the months in the first year when the business didn't have clients.

Contact the writer: 949-553-2959 or ysanchez@ocregister.com