There is nothing in the green heart of the English countryside near Bath to suggest that the gentle climb up the hill at Eastlays takes you to the biggest fine wine cellar in the world. ‘It’s like Fort Knox, cameras everywhere’, says the taxi driver. Sure enough, as we drive into a depot car park surrounded by steel railings, a battery of cameras autofocuses on every twitch of the nose and flutter of the eyelash. This is Corsham Cellars, bought in 1989 by Nigel Jagger when he founded Octavian. Built into the hill, it contains around 7.5 million bottles of fine wine worth over £1 billion. In total, Octavian stores about 10 million bottles across all its facilities.

Mine

In the 19th century, large swaths of the countryside here were dynamited by Isambard Kingdom Brunel to forge a path of the railway line from London to Bristol. The stone had been mined to build Bath and the mine itself became an ammunition dump during World War 2. Being so deeply subterranean, it was completely bomb-proof and therefore the perfect storage centre for munitions. Old black-and-white photographs show cases of TNT from the Atlas Powder Company piled high and looking remarkably similar to cases of wine. Maybe these are what inspired Nigel Jagger to turn the mine into the biggest fine wine facility in the world.

The gates slide open and the security guard checks my name against a pre-arranged visitor card while handing me a red fluorescent jacket. A short walk to the deeply unlovely premises takes us inside the offices, where we’re issued with a primitive oxygen mask to carry down to the underground cellars just in case of an accident. It looks suitably World War 2 issue in its primitive nature and you hope that you won’t have to use it because it doesn’t look easy to operate.

I Love Fine Wine

Wine storage has become an increasingly important issue for fine wine collectors for two major reasons. First of all the prices of top wines have skyrocketed to such an extent that collectors need a secure facility to ensure their wines are safe. Equally importantly, provenance and condition have become the mantra of fine wine brokers and auctioneers. The value of a product as fragile as wine can become easily eroded if the wine is not kept in the optimum conditions for both the packaging the liquid inside. According to Ella Lister, fine wine writer and consultant to Octavian, who accompanies me, these are: 13°C constant temperature, average humidity of 75 - 80 per cent and minimal exposure to UV light and vibration.

The 157-step descent into the mineshaft runs parallel with the train bringing wine out of the cellar. Once below ground, we’re faced with a warren of stone corridors, nooks and crannies of disconcertingly uneven height and floor level, but not so disconcerting that the little Cat trucks can’t ply their way noisily back and forth loaded up with fine wine. In fact the mine, hewn from Bath stone, is not remotely claustrophobic thanks to high ceilings and above all a plentiful supply of air. Supplying ventilation throughout, the galvanized steel metal ducts installed by the Ministry during the war are what make work in the mine possible. We pass a photography studio where a case of Chateau 2008 Margaux is being photographed against a lit background to show the condition of the labels and capsules and the ullage levels, perhaps for an auction catalogue.

Mine all Mine

Ali Cook has been with Octavian for 19 years and knows every nook and cranny. If there were a canary down here, Ali would be the first to know about it. He takes us round the cellars which are laid out in nine different areas, each housing wines from a multitude of wine merchants and private customers. There’s a million square feet equivalent to 18 football pitches. Humidity is at a constant 80 and temperature at 13°C. Around 100 trade clients and around 10,000 private customers store their wines here. Octavian has its own private customer service called Octavian Vaults with around 3000 private clients paying between £14.93 - £17.23 a case annually depending on the number of cases stored.

It’s wall to wall fine wine piled high on two racks, with seemingly endless quantities of Château Lafite, Latour, Margaux and Haut-Brion, top Italian wines such as Solaia, Tignanello, Sassicaia, Aldo Conterno, Bartolo Mascarello and Poggio di Sotto, great Burgundies from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Rousseau and others. Some wine merchants’ names I recognize, others I don’t.

Mine All MIne pt 2

I ask to see my own few bottles in storage with two wine companies, Farr and Corney and Barrow, neither of whom have multi-owner accounts. It had been a fairly easy matter for them to match the wine merchant’s reference number to the rotation number linked to my wines. In the unlikely event therefore that the wine merchant were to go bust, Octavian would be able to identify my wines, even without my name on the case, by reference to matching the rotation number given by Octavian to the wine merchant’s own records. Suitably re-assured, I climb the 157 steps back up to the surface, where, knowing my little nest egg is safe, I breathe the fresh air of England’s green and pleasant land just that little bit more easily.

This article was first published, in the version below, in the April issue of Revue du Vin de France, China.

文 /Anthony Rose 译/张 然
世界最大的精品酒窖
在这个世界上独一无二的酒窖储存几瓶酒，让我觉得骄傲又放心。

没想到吧，在英国乡村邻近巴斯（Bath）
的绿色腹地，慢慢爬上East lays的小
山，你就会来到世界上最大的精品葡
萄酒酒窖。“这就像诺克斯堡的Fort K nox（美
国军事基地），摄像头无处不在”，出租车司
机说。果然，当我们开车到达四周全是钢制栏
杆的仓库停车场，一连串的摄像头自动监视着
所有风吹草动。这就是科舍姆酒窖（Corsha m
Cellars），1989年由Nigel Jagger创立Octavian时
购买。建在山里的酒窖，内有750万瓶精品葡萄
酒，总价值超过10亿欧元。

Hello Corsham

在19世纪时，这里大片的乡村美景因为
工程师伊桑巴德·金德姆·布鲁内尔（Isambard
K i ngdom Br u nel，19世纪著名土木工程师）
铸造了一段从伦敦到布里斯托尔（Bristol）的
铁路而名声大噪。这里的石头被开采用来建
设巴斯（Bat h），留下来的矿井后来成为二战
时期的军火库。在如此深的地下是防轰炸的
好地方，因此也成为了完美的弹药储存中心。
从黑白老照片里就能看出，堆得高高的成箱
At las Powder Company公司的T NT，看上去
与葡萄酒箱非常相似。这也许就是它激发了
Nigel Jagger把这处矿井变为世界上最大的葡
萄酒窖的灵感。
大门滑开，保安人员核对过我的名字与
事先做好的访客卡一致，递给我一件红色荧
光夹克。再走几步就深入一个其貌不扬的屋
子，在这里的办公室，我们得到进入地下酒窖
时使用的简易氧气面罩，以防发生事故，它造
型简单，看起来更像是二战时候用的。你宁愿
不会用到它，因为它看上去并不容易操作。
储酒已经成为葡萄酒收藏者们面对的一
个日益重要的议题。这里有两个主要原因，首
先因为精品葡萄酒的价格一路飞涨，收藏家需
要可靠的储酒设备来保证酒的安全。第二个原
因也同样重要，酒的来源和状态已成为精品酒
经纪商和拍卖行的咒语。像葡萄酒这么脆弱的
产品，如果失去最佳储存条件，价值就会大打
折扣。据我身边的精品葡萄酒作家、Octavian
的顾问Ella Lister所言，最佳的储存条件指的
是：13°C恒温，平均湿度75%—8 0%，以及最
低限度的紫外线和震动。

I Want You

我们沿着157步台阶下到地窖，小火车正
装载着酒开出酒窖。迎面而来的是许多石头通
道和走廊，高低起伏的地势和地面裂缝令人
不安，但令人略感安慰的是满载美酒的小火车
在旁边来来回回，发出各种声响。事实上，多
亏高高的天花板和充足的空气才让我没有得
幽闭恐惧症。这里处处通风，政府在战争期间
还在这里安装了镀锌钢的金属管道，所以在矿
井里也可以工作。我们还经过了一个摄影工作
室，在这里一箱20 08年的玛歌正在被拍照，背
景板上标注着其酒标的状态、密封情况以及损
耗水平，也许在为拍卖目录做准备。
Ali Cook在Octavian已经工作了19年，他
熟悉这里的每一个角落。他带我们在酒窖里四
处逛逛，整个酒窖分成九个不同区域，每个区
域都陈放着大量酒商和私人客户的储酒。酒
窖共有100多万平方英尺，相当于18个足球场。
酒窖的湿度控制在恒定的80%，温度为13°C。
一百多个酒商和一万多名私人客户在这里存
储他们的葡萄酒。Octavian还提供私人客户服
务，称为Octavian Vaults，约有三千名私人客
户支付14.93—17.23英镑（每箱）的年费，具体
价钱取决于储酒量。
两个高高的架子上，摆满整墙的美酒，数
不清的拉菲、玛歌、拉图和奥比昂，顶级意大
利酒如Solaia、Tignanel lo、Sassicaia, 、A ldo
Conterno、Bartolo Mascarel lo 和 Poggio d i
Sotto，以及最好的勃艮第DRC、Rousseau和其
他佳酿。一些酒商的名字我认识，其他的就没
见过了。
我要求去看看我在两个公司名下存储
的几瓶葡萄酒， 要知道在Farr Vintner 或者
是Corney & Barrow，都不会有联名账户，所
以，把酒商的编号与我的酒的编号一对，就
不难找到我的酒了。因此，万一酒商破产了，
Octavian是可以把我的酒找出来的，即使我的
名字没有写在木箱上，只要把 Octavian提供
给我的滚动编号与酒商的编码对上就可以了。
再次把心放下，我爬上157台阶返回地面，我知
道我小小的“财富”是安全的，此时此地，呼
吸着英格兰绿色大地上宜人的清新空气，我
的感觉是如此放松。

Goodbye Corsham

Anthony Rose
常住伦敦。英国葡萄酒记者和作家，在www.independent.
co.uk开设周专栏。也为Decanter、 The World of Fine Wine
等杂志供稿。很多知名葡萄酒大赛的评委和主席。因葡萄酒
写作赢得不少奖项。The Wine Gang 的创办人之一（www.
thewinegang.com）。博客www.anthonyrosewine.com.，微
博Anthony _ Rose。

On the Set of The Guns of Navarone