It would seem to be a dispiriting job, spending your days in a dank and chilly Manhattan subcellar where air conditioners endlessly hum. But Eric White begs to differ. “Some people think I have the best job in town,” said the 37-year-old Cleveland native. “And sometimes I think they’re right.”

Mr. White is cellar master of Chelsea Wine & Storage, Manhattan’s only large-scale, public wine storage facility, and the city’s premier spot for pricey wines to sleep in peace. It’s a 10,000-square-foot, catacomb-like warren of brick, stone, and concrete chambers beneath Chelsea Market, the hip indoor mall of shops and restaurants located in the former Nabisco bakery at 75 Ninth Avenue. About 25,000 cases of wine are entrusted to Mr. White’s care by nearly 400 clients. Some of those clients are as large as Gotham Bar & Grill and Gramercy Tavern, wine-savvy restaurants with 1,000-case, walk-in stashes behind locked gates. Others are private collectors who may have only a single case or two tucked away on a communal shelf. All the wine is pampered at an ideal 55 degrees.

I learned the hard way about proper wine storage. One summer afternoon long ago, I stacked three cases of young Bordeaux against the north wall of the basement storage room in my Upper West Side apartment building. I noted with satisfaction that even on that sizzling day, the spot was cool. A few years later, just before Thanksgiving, I went down to retrieve a few bottles for the big dinner. To my dismay, the place was as warm as a sauna. I hadn’t realized that on the other side of the wall was the boiler! Instead of being gently mellowed, my wine was ruined. That’s not a fate likely to befall the wine kept at Chelsea Wine & Storage. “Even during the blackout two summers ago,” Mr. White said, “the temperature down here never rose above 57 degrees.”

The idea for Chelsea Wine & Storage, according to Mr. White, originated with Don Kurt, a film producer and wine buff. “Don did lots of filming in this building and thought it would be neat to have a place on premises to store his wine,” Mr. White said. The developer of Chelsea Market, Irwin Cohen, told Mr. Kurt that he would give him a great deal on leasing the cellar if Mr. Kurt would also open a retail wine shop above it. That shop, called Chelsea Wine Vault, opened in 1997 with Mr. Kurt and an old friend, Don Barteluce, as owners. Six months later, Mr. White was hired to open the storage facility, which is almost double the size of the shop. He now owns a minority share in the storage business.

Mr. White came to New York from Cleveland hoping for a job in entertainment management. That didn’t work out, but he did find work as a “delivery guy” at Morrell & Company, the Midtown wine shop. “I noticed they had problems with inventory control,” Mr. White said, “so I wrote them a memo on how it could be fixed. And they told me to act on it.”

That put Mr. White on a career path to becoming a cellar master. “In wineries, the cellar master typically not only manages the cellar, but also has a hand in the winemaking process,” Mr. White said. “Here in the city, my job is to safeguard the cellar and also to advise clients on which wines are conducive to aging and when they will be in their prime.”

Mr. White had to become adept at tasting wine as well as at caring for it. “In the Afro-American neighborhood where I grew up,” Mr. White said, “they advertised Wild Irish Rose and Budweiser. I had no idea a bottle of wine could cost $500. Or even more.”

Once installed under Chelsea Market, Mr. White was determined to raise space “down below” to new heights. Too often, he observed, “some store owner had a little extra space and said, ‘Hey, let’s turn it into wine storage.’ He’d put your name on a crate and put it down there. Half the time, he couldn’t find it when you needed it. This was not a customer-friendly atmosphere.”

At Chelsea Wine & Storage, Mr. White opened up the aisles for easy access and had several large staging tables built so that “collectors can come in here and pet their wine.” Mr. White also designed software that gives customers instant access to their wine inventory from home or office. Descriptive information is automatically attached to each bottle.

“We’ve got this friendly atmosphere,” Mr. White said, “so customers regularly come down here and start chatting about wine. Before you know it, somebody opens a special bottle on one of the staging tables for everyone to taste. We’ll get some bread from Amy’s upstairs and a wedge of cheese. One person will say, ‘Wow, this is a great Beaucastel! Hold on while I go get a bottle of Dominus that will go great with the cheese.’ There’s something about the peacefulness of this cellar. People like to come down here to get away from it all.”

Tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. the Black Culinarian Alliance will sponsor a fund-raising event at Chelsea Market called “The Global Food & Wine Experience: Bridging Cultures, Wine and Cuisines.” “We want to reach out to different ethnic groups which may not know much about wine,” said Mr. White, who is coordinating the wines for the event. The cost is $25 a person. For information, call 646-548-2949.