cellar door

See also: cellar-door

English

WOTD – 19 December 2025

A cellar door (sense 1) in Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.A.

A cellar door (sense 2) of a winery in California, U.S.A., where wines can be tasted and bought.

cellar door (plural cellar doors)

A door leading to a cellar.
- 1843 December 19, Charles Dickens, “Stave I. Marley’s Ghost.”, in A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC, pages 24–25:
  The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards the door.
(by extension, metonymic) The part of a winery from which wine may be sampled or purchased.
- 1998, Thomas K. Hardy, “Margaret River [Driftwood Estate]”, in The Australian Wine Pictorial Atlas, 1998–99 edition, Linden Park, S.A.: Thomas K. Hardy, Vintage Image Productions, →ISBN, page 307, column 2:
  The 1996 Semillon Sauvignon Blanc I tasted at the cellar door was a very stylish polished wine with lifted aromatic jasmine and passionfruit aromas leaping out of the glass.
- 2010, Andrew Blake, “The Metrolope & La Bouillabaisse”, in Blake’s Feast: A Life in Food, Chatswood, Sydney, N.S.W.; Auckland: New Holland Publishers, →ISBN, page 32:
  I rushed back armed with a bottle of 1976 Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Rose that I had bought from the cellar door in Reims, ready to celebrate her marriage to George.

door leading to a cellar

part of a winery from which wine may be sampled or purchased

In phonaesthetics, cellar door is said to be a quintessential example of an inherently pleasant-sounding phrase irrespective of its meaning.^[2]

^ “[celer] dore” under “celē̆r, n.(1)”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
^ Grant Barrett (14 February 2010), “On Language: Cellar Door”, in The New York Times Magazine‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 31 May 2025, page 16.