City’s Biggest Wine Cellars

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30448, 23 May 1964, Page 20

City’s Biggest Wine Cellars

The biggest wine cellars in Christchurch are being constructed in northern Colombo street. The new headquarters of Fletcher, Humphreys, and Company, Ltd., will have a total area of 35,000 sq ft on three floors, and almost a third of this will be cellars. The huge excavation has created interest for months, and now that the building is rising above ground, the unusual pattern of arched cellar windows has made passers-by wonder what will be contained there. The managing director of the company (Mr R. G. F. Kingscote) said that when his grandfather told Mr H. Mat-. con that he had bought land in Cathedral square for the firm's present cellars (opened

in 1882), Mr Matson asked: “Why have you gone so far out of town?” There was no Cathedral, and an undertaker’s horses used to graze on the adjoining site now occupied by the AJM.P. Society's building, said Mr Kingscote. Fletcher, Humphreys and Company, Ltd, had bought the Colombo street site from the National Airways Corporation, which had earlier planned to erect an air centre there, said Mr Kingscote. The : block, zoned commercial B, . nearly opposite St Helens i Hosp-.taL now totalled an acre and a quarter with entrances ■ from Colombo street and Bealey avenue. The cellars were in two I parts. A small one in front would recreate on a larger scale the firm's historic cellar room where directors met and . w-me-tastings and luncheons were held. The larger cellar to the rear would provide much extended storage.

:| The ground floor would be ■ devoted entirely to the wine ] • and spirits department and ■ the upper floor in front to ; : bead offices of the firm. A good, even temperature, ; • preferably natural, was de- ■ sirable for the storage of wines. Mr Kingscote said, and I cellars by tradition and experience provided this best. - They did not become unduly i ■ cold in winter, nor unduly 1 ■ warm in summer. No artificial controls would be used. Protection against damp- : ness was essential, so the 1 cellar walls were a “club ( sandwich” of concrete, two ] layers of bituminous mix, < and more concrete. ; ( Some natural lighting did no harm, and that was the ■ reason for the ground-level 1 window arches. j Mr Kingscote said that almost the whole stock held S would be bottled at the point ( of origin. “Wineries over-:] seas can bottle much more j efficiently, and I think the

public likes the producer’s label.” he said. With the growing demand and acceptance of “the few better New Zealand wines” and the “higher-gravity ex-port-type beers, in ail cases up to world standards." these New Zealand products would be kept but most of the stock would be wines from France, Germany, Italy, Spain. Portugal, South Africa. Australia, Hungary, Jugoslavia, spirits from overseas, and New Zealand gin. The site was sufficient for considerable landscaping, Mr Kingscote said, and this would be done before the opening in the spring. A feature would be the “cellar ghost” embodied in the firm’s trade mark and a traditional sign of the trade. An Bft model of this figure would be erected in the forecourt and the bung-tap. in its barrel body would play water into a surrounding pool. The architects for the building are Messrs Trengrove, Trengrove, and Marshall.