Cave Atlantique

The Cave Atlantique, a wine specially store located in the Garage, will move out of Cambridge this month due to "dramatically" rising rent costs, its owners, both Harvard University graduates, said yesterday.

The store, which caries mainly European and California wines and some imported been, was one of the first tenants of the Garage complex, said owners Fred H. Smith '62 and his wife Cynthia, who graduated from the Law School in 1989.

The Smiths opened the Cave Atlantique in 1973 under a ten-year lease, whose expiration next month exposes them to new rental rates "three times as high" as those previously charged by George owner Louis DiGiovanni, according to Fred Smith.

The couple entered the wine business "to test out our way of marketing fine wines," said Cynthia Smith, adding, "we appeal to people who like a wine because it tastes good, not because it's famous."

The store will move to Clifton Street in Somerville, just outside of Cambridge, and will continue to make deliveries to the Cambridge area, including Harvard Square.

The Smiths own two other Cave Atlantique stores, one in Winchester and one in downtown Boston, which they plan to move to the Somerville location.

No decision has been announced regarding what kind of store will buy the Cave Atlantique's space, but store wine consultant Robert Jones said he has "heard rumors" of "another ice cream place."