Avanti vs. Eurocave?

R

Rahsaan

Rahsaan
I know wine refrigerator talk is one of the lowest forms of wine board discussion. But, who am I to be snobbish?!

I've had two Avanti units for several years. The oldest just conked out after 13 years, so I need a replacement. Am looking at two units, another Avanti, and the Eurocave La Premiere M. Sort of the same ballpark pricewise, but would get a slightly larger unit/more storage capacity with Avanti.

From what I understand, Eurocave is the 'better' brand, but not sure how much that really means for me and my wine? I'm not too concerned with design, and 13 years for the previous unit seems like a good shelf life. But, if Eurocave will keep the temp better (and preserve labels better with humidity), then it's worth it?
 
I don't think it's a low form of discussion whatsoever. Hell, I wish I had the space (and money outlay) to store all of my wine at home rather than rent offsite lockers!

I have a Zephyr 53 bottle under the counter fridge. It actually stores 53 bottles so here's a case of truth in advertising. I'm quite happy with it. The largest capacity fridge they sell holds 148 bottles.

I checked and there are dealers in NYC that sell their products.

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zephyronline.com
 
I've also had two avanti units over the years (the second one is still here), and while they stick around my impression is that they just die a very slow death starting fairly early in their tenure. I got them for short-term storage and convenience only, and because the price was decent. I am surprised to hear eurocave is in the same price range - I'd be very tempted.
 
originally posted by Pavel Tchichikov:
...I am surprised to hear eurocave is in the same price range - I'd be very tempted.
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Well there are units that are roughly similar in price, but the storage is not the same! I'd get roughly 150 bottles with Avanti for same price as 100 with Eurocave. It's the dollar amount I'm comfortable spending, but the tradeoff would be capacity.
 
Eurocave has always had one of the worst dollar-per-bottle ratios in the industry. I guess it's worth it if you really like their drawer system, but to me that seemed like an unnecessary bell-and-whistle that just makes the dollar-per-bottle ratio worse.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Eurocave has always had one of the worst dollar-per-bottle ratios...an unnecessary bell-and-whistle that just makes the dollar-per-bottle ratio worse.
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Yes, that was my hesitation around Eurocave, because I'm not really in the market for bells and whistles. But then Avanti does seem like it breaks down earlier.

In general, it seems like wine refrigerators are a tough category that don't really compete on quality.
 
I have a Marvel that must be at least 15 years old without any problem but the price seems to have gone up and the new ones have more bells and whistles about which I have nothing to say.
 
FWIW, I have a large Eurocave and 2 34 bottle Avantis.

I'm happy with all of them except that the newer Avanti isn't deep enough for some of those ridiculously tall German or Austrian bottles.

The older Avanti has been plugging along for over 25 years.
 
I also have a vintage Avanti, merrily rolling along, occasionally even too cold. I'm not persuaded about the claim that it holds 40 bottles -- it has shelf space for 30 and then a bin, of sorts, that I've never gotten more than 6 bottles into. But nothing succeeds like success, anyway.
 
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