Store, Ship & Share
How to keep your wine safe
You’re touring the wine country collecting your prizes from a number of your favorite wineries and from a few new discoveries. You need to keep your bottles safe from the elements and properly stored. Then they need to be shipped home. Some wineries will ship to some states but are legally limited to only ship the wine that they make. This requires you the extra expense and hassle of shipping wine from every winery you visit and only if they have the time and the facility to do it.
There is a better way. Safe Haven Wine Services will collect and consolidate your
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purchase and send it to you in one convenient shipment. If you bought a lot of wine and your cellar at home can’t handle it all, they will provide a private, climate controlled locker (see photos below) and ship your wine to you as you need it.
Safe Haven services the entire
Wineries take great care in producing a quality product, and as consumers we need to continue that care and protect our investment with proper storage of our wine. To learn more about wine storage, see Safe Haven’s Wine Storage 101 article.
To contact Safe Haven and learn more about their services call Corrine or Daniel at 805-238-SAFE (7233) or at www.safehavenwineservices.com
A Safe Haven For Your Wine Investments.
By: Arthur Przebinda
Founder redwinebuzz.com
E-mail: xenophile@redwinebuzz.com
E-mail: xenophile@redwinebuzz.com
Safe Haven Wine Services offers a personalized wine storage and shipping solution for local collectors, wine country travelers and area wineries.
Arthur Przebinda interviewed Corrine and Daniel Appelbaum in 2008
soon after they opened their new wine storage facility in Paso Robles, California. Here is an approved excerpts from the original article.
To tour their facility and tasting lounge, call 805.238-SAFE (7233)
rwb: How did you come to start your company? It’s probably not the only one of its kind, is it?
Corrine Appelbaum: We’re the only one with our combination of services that I’m aware of. There is another wine storage facility in North [San Luis Obispo] County but it doesn’t offer the array of services that we have combined with personal storage. There are several facilities, like ours, throughout California.
When Daniel and I moved back to the Central Coast from the Bay Area, we had a big wine collection and needed a place to store it. The only option that was available to us was one nearby that clearly could be improved upon.
So we came up with this idea of providing a high quality service for people and their wine. We did our research by visiting every [wine storage] facility that we could find in California over the next several months. We took notes about what we did and didn’t like and what could be improved upon. Based on that, we created our business model.We knew we wanted to put in lockers. Then we wanted to do an event room to be able to bring wine enthusiasts together. With Daniel’s background in logistics, we knew there would be a need for people that are storing their wines with us to also have shipping.
Corrine Appelbaum: It was towards the end of June. Every week, it gets better and better. We’re introducing ourselves to local hotels, wineries, bed and breakfasts, tour companies, limousine services and event planners.
rwb: When did you open your doors for business? So how has business been?
Corrine Appelbaum: It was towards the end of June. Every week, it gets better and better. We’re introducing ourselves to local hotels, wineries, bed and breakfasts, tour companies, limousine services and event planners.
rwb: Geographically speaking, where is your clientele from? I would imagine that the majority would be from the surrounding areas.
Daniel Appelbaum: It’s about half and half. Abut 50% are wine travelers who come to our area and are storing wine with us and want it shipped back to their home. They will purchase their wines and store it with us and we ship it back to them. So they take advantage of a lot of the wine clubs and purchasing wine in 
larger quantities from our area and they store it here and we ship it back to them.
larger quantities from our area and they store it here and we ship it back to them. And the other 50% would be local – folks from this area. Obviously, because of the temperatures here – in excess of 90 or 100 degrees- they store their wines here in a temperature-controlled environment. They have very easy access to it anytime that they want.
rwb: So do you have any international clients or are they mostly U.S.- and California-based?
Daniel Appelbaum: We’ve shipped to New Zealand. We’ve been asked to ship to parts of Europe. So I would say that we definitely will be doing some international shipping.
rwb: Do you pick up and store wines from the immediate Paso Robles and San Luis Obispo County area or do you pick up wines from points further north and south?
Daniel Appelbaum: We can pick up pretty much anywhere from Northern California to Southern California. It does work. We haven’t expanded that far. We have alliances with companies that bring in glass from the Bay Area that would bring in the wine and various other companies that would bring in wine to our facility.
Corrine Appelbaum: Also, to give an example, we have a client from Texas. He was doing wine tasting from Santa Barbara to the Santa Cruz Mountains. Once he established his account with us and had a locker, practically every day he would receive wine shipments from wineries all up and down California that he had obviously visited and liked their wine. We store it for him and send it to him as he wants.
Texas. He was doing wine tasting from Santa Barbara to the Santa Cruz Mountains. Once he established his account with us and had a locker, practically every day he would receive wine shipments from wineries all up and down California that he had obviously visited and liked their wine. We store it for him and send it to him as he wants.Daniel Appelbaum: Yes, there are two different things going on here. One is that we pick up wines from wineries and handle their direct shipping for them. Then there a lot of folks that travel, visit all sorts of wineries and join wine club. We receive those shipments, inventory them, put them in the storage locker and ship it to them as needed.
rwb: What is the main advantage to the client of having multiple wineries shipping to you and then Safe Haven shipping the wines to them?
Corrine Appelbaum: The first advantage is the issue that a lot of people have in their homes: They simply just don’t have the space and they don’t have the temperature controlled environment in their home. And so this is a good solution for them. They’re able to purchase the wine they like. They can have it stored here and then shipped to them when they want it if they don’t have the space or the conditions at home to store it properly.
rwb: I was looking at your web site and saw images of lockers with slide-out racks. I think I read somewhere that you have walk-in cellars and that you offer bulk storage. We’re in earthquake country. How are the wines protected against earthquake damage?
Daniel Appelbaum: The lockers were designed to earthquake standards. They’re bolted to a six inch concrete slab. So in a large earthquake, the only thing left standing in our facility would probably be the wine lockers.
rwb: Can you go into some more detail of the cost of your services?
Corrine Appelbaum:
We have top [row] lockers starting at 25 dollars a month. We reserve those for people from out of town and those clients who want long-term aging. They are only accessed by us or our employees. month-to-month at 39 dollars a month for people that need, maybe, temporary storage if they’re moving.
The other three [rows of] lockers are much easier to access. They are priced according to the length of the agreement. We have a six- month agreement at 31 dollars a month, a twelve-month agreement at 35 dollars. These are all paid in advance. We also have a month-to-month at 39 dollars a month for people that need, maybe, temporary storage if they’re moving.
rwb: I was under the impression that you have individual units of varying size and capacity.
Corrine Appelbaum: All of our lockers are the same size. They each store 12 standard cases of wine. The difference in price is based on their location – in terms of accessibility. We currently have 292 lockers, with about a third rented. Once these are filled, we will install an additional 208 for a total of 500.
Daniel Appelbaum: The lockers have security locks on them and everyone puts in their own code. They also have a bolting system. If you wanted to have a locker plus one above and one below, they would be bolted together and all you would have to do is put in one security code on one door and the lockers would open simultaneously.
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Safe Haven Wine Services
is located in Paso Robles – just east of the town proper and north of Highway 46 East and the new Firestone winery, but south of the Paso Robles airport. Located in a large building, the facility includes a climate-controlled storage area where wines are stored securely in a temperature of 57 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity of 65 to 70 percent ensured by double-redundant climate control units.
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rwb: Can you talk a little bit about the services you offer, like inventorying wines, etc?
A lot of people who store wine with us are from areas of the country where it can be rather warm. That’s why they keep their wines with us.
Corrine Appelbaum: We’re pretty excited about our inventory program. We just completed two rather large collections. One, in particular: a local wine maker just recently moved her entire personal wine collection and we inventoried 396 bottles. We have a [computer] program that gives an absolute abundance of information. Everything from tasting notes to best time to drink and scores and a lot of other stuff. We can put it in a spreadsheet and email it to the client. It’s been a very popular feature with some of our clients.
Another really popular feature is consolidation of shipments. If a wine country traveler comes into the area and goes wine tasting at several wineries. Rather than have each winery from which they buy wine ship out wines individually, which can be costly, we can consolidate that into one or two shipments.
rwb: What has been the biggest challenge to this new venture?
Corrine Appelbaum: The biggest challenge has been getting people to see the value of this service. It allows you to consolidate shipments, save money on shipping.
To get in touch with Dan or Corrine to learn more about their services or tour their facility call 805-238-SAFE (7233)
or email concierge@safehavenwineservices.com
The foremost authority on Central Coast wine, redwinebuzz.com is an independent guide offering wine reviews, articles, information and eduacation. www.redwinebuzz.com
