The Best Cellar List

Four wine lovers whose private collections are as impressive as the rooms that contain them

- BY CAROLINE AKSICH

THE LIQUOR BARON

Who: John Sleeman, founder of Sleeman Breweries and John Sleeman and Sons Neighbourhood: Oakville Size of collection: 1,500 bottles Rarest bottle: 1963 Fonseca Vintage Port Best bottle: Collection of Château Margaux 1981 to 2020 Best bargain: Any Chianti Classico Riserva

Booze is baked into John Sleeman's DNA.

His grandfather was a Prohibition-era bootlegger who supplied Al Capone, and more than a century later, the family name is still tethered to alcohol. Yet, for all that liquid lineage, Sleeman grew up in a resolutely dry home. He didn't discover wine until his 20s, and he spent the next 50 years enthusiastically catching up.

These days, Sleeman drinks omnivorously. "Some nights call for a glass of wine; some deserve a whiskey," he says. But wine is the true space hog: in his 1,500-bottle cellar, only a few hundred slots go to grain; the rest are claimed by grapes. It's the result of decades of collecting, a habit that started in a much larger home—with a beer bottle-shaped swimming pool—where he built a stone cellar under the garage that was big enough to host black-tie dinners. When he and his wife, Julie, downsized to a townhouse in 2018, the one thing Sleeman refused to shrink was his collection.

To make room, the couple sacrificed a full basement bedroom. They installed a dedicated HVAC system that required contractors to tunnel ducts beneath the house. They also had concrete block walls built to keep the space at a steady 11 degrees—drywall wouldn't hold the desired temperature or humidity.

For all its rough-hewn charm, the cellar hums with Swiss-watch efficiency. Sleeman used to pay a cataloguing company to conduct an annual inventory and appraisal of his collection but dropped the service in 2020. "Now I just keep it all in my head," he says.