This is where James Loo comes to relax. It is quiet and cool. The smell of pine fills your nostrils. And the rows upon rows of bottles create a pleasing sense of order.

This is his wine cellar.

The cellar in his Stratton Preserve home holds more than 2,500 bottles, neatly fit into pine racks that stretch from the bamboo floor to the ceiling. The aesthetic is simple - the point is to protect his wine collection, not to impress with fancy woodwork.

"The cellar is the investment that protects the real investment," said Loo, whose collection ranges from the inexpensive to the highly coveted (2002 Chateau Lafite Rothschild, anyone?).

Loo is not the only one looking to safeguard his liquid investment. Wine cellars are becoming a must-have feature in highend homes. If you took a turn through the Parade of Homes last year, you might have noticed that many of the fancier homes featured a wine cellar - and the bigger, the better.

The trend is not surprising, since wine is becoming a more integral part of the fabric of life in America.

Two years ago, wine replaced beer as the most widely drunk alcohol in the United States, and last year the country became the biggest consumer of wine in the world, said Tim Baldwin, director of wine at The Broadmoor, the biggest wine buyer in the state.

"On the floor of the (Broadmoor) restaurants you can definitely see it happening," Baldwin said. "Almost every table we talk to, they want to talk about the wine."

That preference trickles down from restaurants to dinner tables, to the wine cellar in the basement.

One of the beneficiaries of the change is custom wine cellar builder Alan Manley, who owns VintageSpec.

An avid wine connoisseur, former owner of an upscale restaurant and lifelong hobby furniture maker, Manley has installed about 40 wine cellars since 2002. Some have gone into restaurants as far away as Dallas and Washington state, but most have been for local homeowners. Loo is one of his customers.

"A wine cellar is de rigueur for homes $1 million and above. Not having a wine cellar is kind of weird," Manley said. "But a lot of the wine cellars they're getting aren't very good. The homebuilders make it look nice, but some of them aren't doing the wine any favors."

The enemies of wine are light, heat, air and dryness. A great-looking cellar might still allow too much heat fluctuation or too much air exchange.

Manley charges a minimum of $15,000 for his cellars, and he spends most of that money on boring but essential features such as insulation, vapor barriers and top-of-the-line cooling systems.

"We stuff every last little crack with as much as we can get into it," he said. "I want that cellar to be great. These are not inexpensive propositions."

In fact, he turns away about one-third of prospective clients because he doesn't think they need a wine cellar. If they don't have a collection of 500 bottles or an interest in wines that are made to be aged for long periods, he said, then a wine refrigerator is a smarter choice.

Most of his clients are couples in their mid-30s to mid-50s, he said, and it's usually the guy who is the wine buff, though not always. Some of them are hard-core wine collectors, but the majority are people hoping to learn more as they fill their cellar.

The wine sellers at Vintage's Wine & Spirits, 9 S. Tejon St., say they see seasoned collectors who know exactly what they want when they walk in, as well as beginners who want to fill an entire cellar for a certain amount of money. For some people, they say, it's just about the bragging rights of having a wine cellar.

"A lot of people are doing smaller cellars, more like 50 to 100 bottles," Vintage's owner Erin Collins said. "Basically I'm seeing that a lot of people are cellaring them, but not aging them for a long time."

James Loo has evolved into the hard-core collector. His interest in wine began when he owned a brewpub and restaurant in Telluride and he had to build a wine list for his restaurant.

He developed a taste for big, bold California cabernet sauvignon, and filled his wine refrigerator. But just as his collection outgrew his fridge, his tastes evolved away from the big fruit-bomb of a California cab and toward the elegance and complexity of other long-aged wines.

At that point, he invested in a wine cellar.

Now, he's a partner in the growing Waters Winery in Walla Walla, Wash., and he's filling up his large cellar.

That's the risk of having a cellar, said Mark Van Horn, another of Manley's clients who built an 800-bottle cellar. The collection seems to keep growing with the size of the cellar.

"At first it seemed crazy. I thought we'd never fill it," Van Horn said. "And over time we have filled it, and are now pushing our capacity."

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0226 or bill.reed@gazette.com

SHOULD I HAVE A WINE CELLAR?

There's no reason to spend thousands of dollars on a wine cellar unless you plan to have a valuable collection. Here are some other wine storage options, with guidelines for when to move to the next level:

Wine racks or shelving kits, $20-$1,000: This is the place to start, but you probably don't want to invest too much. Check out iwawine.com to see some choices. The downside: You cannot control heat and humidity (a problem exacerbated by our dry climate), so you can't store wines that need to age. When you want to start collecting wine beyond what you will drink in the next few months, or if your tastes change to wines that need time to age, you need to move on.

Wine refrigerator, $100-$3,000: This is a great choice for casual or budding wine collectors. Even wine cellar builders say that if you have fewer than 500 bottles in your collection, or your tastes lean toward wines that won't age well for more than five years, a fridge is the best option. But when you outgrow the refrigerator, or you get into wines that age for 10 or 20 years, it's time to upgrade again.

Custom wine cellar, $15,000 and up: OK, you are now a full-blown wine collector, with hundreds of bottles, including some worth quite a bit of coin. Now, you need a cellar simply to protect your investment. The cellar allows you to collect hundreds or thousands of bottles of your favorites and store them in the perfect environment for as long as they need. But be warned: Wine collectors say that no matter how big the cellar is, you always manage to fill it up.

Wine storage facility: Wine collectors in big cities often keep their collections in a rented temperature- and humidity-controlled storage unit. However, the closest wine-storage facility is in Denver, making it impractical for Colorado Springs wine enthusiasts.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A CELLAR

A cellar should protect wine from its natural enemies: heat, dryness, air and light.

Temperature control: Consistent temperature is the key. Most wine cellars are kept at 55-60 degrees (the colder it is, the slower the aging process). Don't cheap out on the cooling unit - if the temperature spikes, the wine can be ruined.

Humidity control: You want your cellar to maintain at least 60 percent humidity. That's why you can't simply stick it in a cool basement in Colorado. Cooling systems that collect ambient moisture, water features inside the cellar, and unfinished wood are some tricks to boost humidity. Insulation: You want a massive amount of insulation around your cellar. This keeps the chill in the room so your cooling unit doesn't work so hard. If your power goes out, a combo of great insulation, sealing and vapor barriers can keep temps consistent for hours or even days.

Minimal air exchange: If air is escaping under doors or through light fixtures, the humidity will quickly escape your cellar. That's bad news.

Minimal light: The doors and windows of the cellar should protect the wines inside. Wooden racks can provide additional shade. And even the lights inside the cellar shouldn't be too harsh.

Horizontal storage: You want wine bottles on their sides so the liquid stays in contact with the cork, which prevents air from seeping in and keeps the cork moist so it fits the bottle snugly.

Safe zone: Create a section of the cellar filled exclusively with wines for people who aren't into wines as much, recommends Alan Manley, of VintageSpec. The expert in the family must stock it with varieties that are ready to drink, so they can grab from this section and not nab the bottle being saved for 2040.

SOURCE: VintageSpec, Tim Baldwin