(ESPN) - Somewhere in the horseshoe-shaped wine cellar beneath Danica Patrick's home in Scottsdale, Ariz., a bottle of Harlan Estate cabernet sauvignon rests, improves, awaits the proper moment. Maybe a birthday, a dinner with friends, or perhaps even a first NASCAR victory will coerce Patrick downstairs and into her antechamber of bins and vertical display shelves. "Well, now, if you watch 'Sideways,' it's not the night that makes the wine, it's the wine that makes the night," she said, referencing the 2004 cinematic homage to wine and its devotees. "Uh-huh." Some wine drinkers are aficionados. Some are connoisseurs. Patrick jokingly refers to herself as a "wino." Hers is a humble but fervent affection for a complex and increasingly expensive pleasure.