John Singer Sargent The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit painting

John Singer Sargent The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit paintingJohn Singer Sargent The Chess Game paintingJohn Singer Sargent Oyster Gatherers of Cancale painting
He stepped out of the wine-tasting room into the wine cellar proper. Here the temperature was maintained at a constant fifty-five degrees.Fourteen thousand bottles required a lot of racks—a maze of racks. These weren’t simply arranged like aisles in a supermarket. Instead, they lined a cozy brick labyrinth of vaulted passageways that intersected at circular care that it required, and the havoc that it caused with neck and shoulder muscles. Each man could properly rotate between twelve hundred and thirteen hundred bottles per four-hour session.Through a flow of cool dry air that pumped ceaselessly from ceiling vents, Fric followed a narrow dome-vaulted passageway of Pinot Noir to a wider groin-vaulted corridor of Cabernet, circled a curiously coved grotto of Lafitte Rothschild stocked with various vintages, continued through a tunnel of Merlot, in search of a place where he would be able to hide without fear of discovery.grottoes ringed by more racks.Four times each year, every bottle in the collection was gently rotated a quarter turn—ninety degrees—in its niche. This ensured that no edge of any cork would dry out and that the sediment would settle properly to the bottom of each punt.The two porters, Mr. Worthy and Mr. Phan, were able to attend to the turning of the wine bottles for only four hours a day due to the [206] tediousness of the work, the measured