The Best Cellar List

1 The Vintner

Who: Lucas Labelle, owner of Labelle Wines, and Tyler Reaume, publicist Neighbourhood: Summerhill Size of collection: 650 bottles Most expensive bottle: 2017 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti La Tâche Grand Cru Best bottle: 2017 Domaine Jean Yves Bizot Echezeaux Grand Cru Best bargain: Domaine Les Carmels Les Caprices Merlot

Before Labelle ever dreamed of launching a wine agency, he and Reaume, his husband, were living in a condo teetering on the edge of a Hoarders episode. Their space held three wine fridges, and excess bottles were squirrelled into every dark corner. Open a cabinet looking for rice and you’d find nebbiolo; look inside a desk drawer and there would be a rogue burgundy between tax receipts. Eventually, the only possible solution wasn’t another fridge—it was more square footage.

In 2019, they upgraded to a Summerhill semi with a basement begging for reinvention. It was a lime-green shag-­carpeted rec room, but Labelle spotted cellar potential the moment he saw it.

Labelle’s sister, designer Montana Labelle, handled the full-home overhaul and carried her calm, minimalist aesthetic straight into the cellar. Rosehill Wine Cellars layered in the technical sorcery: temperature, humidity, ventilation and the exact 11-degree angle of the display shelves. The installer spent days fussing with millimetres to get the pitch right—a tilt that perfectly displays the labels while keeping the corks hydrated.

A few years in, the cellar’s gravitational pull grew stronger than Labelle’s day job at Apple. Mid-pandemic, he quit, and by 2022, his wine-importing agency was live—the cellar doubling as its HQ.

Since launching, Labelle’s stash has nearly doubled to about 650 bottles. Labelle Wines now pour at some of Toronto’s most coveted tables, including 20 Victoria and Prime Seafood Palace. These days, almost everything in the cellar is a wine he represents. “I’ve stopped buying outside my portfolio,” he says.

2 The Aficionados

Who: Jennifer Love, publicist, and Adam Watson, co-founder of Statements Media, an outdoor advertising company Neighbourhood: Trinity-Bellwoods Size of collection: 450 bottles Most expensive bottle: 2013 Masseto Toscana IGT Best bottle: 2016 Sassicaia Best bargain: Château Cantin Saint-Emilion Grand Cru or any 2020 Chianti Classico Riserva

Love and Watson’s first date was a wine tasting at the Shangri-La. Soon afterward, they were taking sommelier courses at George Brown. Wine quickly became their passion, what they travelled for and used to mark milestones. So when they bought a four-storey Trinity-Bellwoods laneway house in 2017, it made sense that the reno­vation would centre a showpiece worthy of their shared obsession.

One evening, after a couple of glasses, Watson sketched an idea on a napkin: instead of giving up precious floor space to a traditional wine display, why not float their collection? That doodle became a four-metre-tall vitrine brought to life by Jessica Neilas of Wolfe Interior Design. Built from tempered glass and steel, it manages to make more than 100 kilos of wine look improbably weightless.

The home’s unorthodox floor plan—with bedrooms below and entertaining spaces stacked above—turns the open stairway into a slow reveal, culminating in the drama of the fourth-floor dining room. For all its presence, the installation holds just 90 bottles, all wines in active rotation. Another 500 or so (age-worthy bottles and sentimental favourites) live downstairs in proper cellar storage.

The pair’s drinking styles couldn’t be more different. Jennifer happily pulls the cork on a great bottle while Adam would prefer to cellar everything forever. Yet, despite their Bacchus-versus-Saturn instincts, their tastes align perfectly, from northern Rhône to Tuscany’s brunellos.

Related: The best bottles of wine at the LCBO for $25 or less

3 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.

Related: Inside the kitchen of John Sleeman, founder of Sleeman Breweries

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. Bottles are organized by country, then region, then vintage—oldest down low, newest up high. 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.

4 The Hosts

Who: Nick Di Donato, CEO of Liberty Entertainment Group, and Nadia Di Donato, interior designer and Liberty Entertainment Group creative director Neighbourhood: Etobicoke Size of collection: 3,000 bottles Most expensive bottle: 2007 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon Best bottle: 1969 Petrus Best bargain: Fumanelli Amarone

When the Di Donatos moved into their current home in 2016, their first design decision wasn’t about paint colours or furniture—it was where the wine cellar would go. The pantry never stood a chance: Nadia, who designs all of Liberty Entertainment’s restaurants, already envisioned something grander, and given how often they eat out, extra kitchen storage wasn’t exactly essential.

The result is a glass-encased 500-square-foot wine sanctuary anchoring the house’s lower level. Stainless-steel racking disappears once the bottles are slotted in, leaving a clean wall of forward-facing labels—no tugging out an Amarone just to check the vintage.

The cellar serves as the home’s de facto hearth, an entertaining hub where everyone eventually ends up, glass in hand. Inside, there’s a small tasting table, but at a steady 14 degrees—perfect for bottles, brisk for bodies—the glass box works best as an uncorking station. Just outside is a fully kitted-out stone bar, a billiard table and a home theatre.

Wine has always been woven into the Di Donatos’ lives. “We’re Italian,” Nick says. Their cellar reflects it: mostly bottles from the Boot, many with personal significance. Nick spent years collecting 1990 vintages—the year their eldest son was born—which they recently poured at his Casa Loma wedding.

For all the treasures in the room—a 1969 Petrus, a 1960 Latour—Nick resists any suggestion that he’s a magpie. “I buy to drink,” he says, “and a few to hold on to.”