The Wine Cellar of Zazen Restaurant is located underground at the entrance of the restaurant. The ceiling of the cellar is made of glass, so that guests can look into the cellar from above. The wine cellar is build out of clay bricks and has about 30cm thick walls to the outside. Two cooling units control the temperature, keeping it at 18 degrees Celsius. Both of the units regularly switch into a de-humidifying mode in order to keep the humidity at 70%. The Wine Cellar has space for about 900 bottles plus another 200 bottles in the fridges provided for the white wines and rosés. Within the Wine Cellar we have two old wine barrels for decorative use and to allow us to conduct wine tastings for small audiences. The Wine Cellar has officially been opened in August 2010. Therefore, the inventory and stock of wines have gradually been increased, due to the considerable initial investment.
When making the wine selection we were keen on providing the broadest range of wines available, covering major regions from 16 different countries in the Old and New World, as this did not exist on Samui and very rarely in Thailand in general. In order to accomplish this goal we needed to work with almost all of the many wine suppliers around Thailand (22 in total).