Wine fridge recommendations or advice?

D

Delia

Delia
I need a wine fridge for 100+ bottles, and most of the options are built for Bordeaux bottles, which doesn't work well for me. Any advice on brands or models that are good for Burgundy / Rhone / Champagne / etc? Or stores that have this kind of thing?

I think it goes without saying that I don't want to pay more than I have to, but spending a little extra to get a reliable unit is worthwhile. (I did think about using a regular fridge, but my past experience has been that they don't work that well for wine, which cancels out any savings.)

Thank you in advance for any guidance!
 
in what manner did a regular fridge not work that well?

wine fridges that i've encountered all seem to be made to look like and/or be as expensive as possible, because anyone that needs a wine fridge is already a big spender on wine. ditto for wine cellar air conditioners.
 
Thanks for replying! The problems with the regular fridges were:

1) Because they're not built for wine bottles, it's hard to optimize the space—the drawers are mostly dead space (and you can't just take them out because the space isn't deep enough for bottles); most of the inexpensive fridges have a freezer, which you can't use; and the shelf height options are limited, which means you end up with more dead space and/or tall shelves where the wine has to be stacked high.

2) Wine is too heavy and breaks the shelves if you have more than one or two layers.

3) It's a challenge to organize the bottles on tall shelves so that the top layers don't tip forward and fall out.

4) Every time you want a bottle that's not on the top layer, you have to unload everything and play Tetris again.

All that said, if you have tips on how to make a regular fridge work, I'm absolutely open to that!
 
Robert, I think you’re being a bit harsh there. A wine fridge differs from a regular one in maintaining higher humidity inside (corks will dry out and ullage will be worse in a low humidity regular fridge) and reducing vibration. One might quibble about the importance of the latter, but it is a selling point. I’m not going to defend those cellar AC units, though.

To the OP: FWIW, Lowe’s is selling a Hisense 54 bottle wine fridge for what looks like a reasonable price. I know nothing about the brand, but since you could buy 4 of them for the price of a comparably sized Eurocave, it’s hard to see how you could go too wrong.

Mark Lipton
 
My first wine fridge was a full size Kenmore freezer that I plugged into a temperature controller set to 52 degrees. I bought it (and the temp controller) in 1998 and stuck it in my parents’ basement. Has been working fine for 27 years. My parents still use it. The bottles I stored there for about 17 years, when I retrieved my final tranche still there, have all been perfect. I never fussed much about humidity, but my dad would fill a water bottle every once in a while that sat in the door shelf. As for stacking bottles, that wasn’t great, but it worked. I had no problem with shelf strength at three bottles high. My max total bottle count in there was about 120 bottles at peak and always over 50-60 bottles. With that thermal mass and good insulation, it barely cycled. It was also quite low vibration when it did cycle on rare occasions.
 
originally posted by MLipton:
Robert, I think you’re being a bit harsh there. A wine fridge differs from a regular one in maintaining higher humidity inside (corks will dry out and ullage will be worse in a low humidity regular fridge) and reducing vibration. One might quibble about the importance of the latter, but it is a selling point. I’m not going to defend those cellar AC units, though.

To the OP: FWIW, Lowe’s is selling a Hisense 54 bottle wine fridge for what looks like a reasonable price. I know nothing about the brand, but since you could buy 4 of them for the price of a comparably sized Eurocave, it’s hard to see how you could go too wrong.

Mark Lipton
Click to expand...

I say that the low humidity bugbear is simply not true. i've been living in a low humidity environment for 25 years now with no humidity control and have yet to encounter even the smallest bit of ullage or dry corks. and some of my wines have been in this storage the full 25 years.

in 'making sense of wine', Matt kramer has a thorough discussion on what is important in wine storage and he concludes that the only time humidity is a problem is when it is too high and labels mildew and fall off. ullage is caused by lots of significant temperature swings helped by a less than perfect cork seal, biological activity in the bottle, or by just plain cooking the wine.

an inch and a half of well seated, sound cork is simply not a vehicle for evaporative losses.
 
originally posted by robert ames:
originally posted by MLipton:
Robert, I think you’re being a bit harsh there. A wine fridge differs from a regular one in maintaining higher humidity inside (corks will dry out and ullage will be worse in a low humidity regular fridge) and reducing vibration. One might quibble about the importance of the latter, but it is a selling point. I’m not going to defend those cellar AC units, though.

To the OP: FWIW, Lowe’s is selling a Hisense 54 bottle wine fridge for what looks like a reasonable price. I know nothing about the brand, but since you could buy 4 of them for the price of a comparably sized Eurocave, it’s hard to see how you could go too wrong.

Mark Lipton
Click to expand...

I say that the low humidity bugbear is simply not true. i've been living in a low humidity environment for 25 years now with no humidity control and have yet to encounter even the smallest bit of ullage or dry corks. and some of my wines have been in this storage the full 25 years.

in 'making sense of wine', Matt kramer has a thorough discussion on what is important in wine storage and he concludes that the only time humidity is a problem is when it is too high and labels mildew and fall off. ullage is caused by lots of significant temperature swings helped by a less than perfect cork seal, biological activity in the bottle, or by just plain cooking the wine.

an inch and a half of well seated, sound cork is simply not a vehicle for evaporative losses.
Click to expand...
I think we have to distinguish between the low humidity of e.g. a passively cooled cellar and the low humidity produced by a refrigeration unit. Put a strawberry in a fridge and see how long it takes to mummify. And here we’re talking about maybe a decade or two of low absolute humidity. OTOH, I’ve maintained a below grade, passively cooled cellar for 35 years. Corks are pristine and ullage minimal, and I take no special precautions about humidity control, so I am largely with you and Matt Kramer on this topic.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by robert ames:
originally posted by MLipton:
Robert, I think you’re being a bit harsh there. A wine fridge differs from a regular one in maintaining higher humidity inside (corks will dry out and ullage will be worse in a low humidity regular fridge) and reducing vibration. One might quibble about the importance of the latter, but it is a selling point. I’m not going to defend those cellar AC units, though.

To the OP: FWIW, Lowe’s is selling a Hisense 54 bottle wine fridge for what looks like a reasonable price. I know nothing about the brand, but since you could buy 4 of them for the price of a comparably sized Eurocave, it’s hard to see how you could go too wrong.

Mark Lipton
Click to expand...

I say that the low humidity bugbear is simply not true. i've been living in a low humidity environment for 25 years now with no humidity control and have yet to encounter even the smallest bit of ullage or dry corks. and some of my wines have been in this storage the full 25 years.

in 'making sense of wine', Matt kramer has a thorough discussion on what is important in wine storage and he concludes that the only time humidity is a problem is when it is too high and labels mildew and fall off. ullage is caused by lots of significant temperature swings helped by a less than perfect cork seal, biological activity in the bottle, or by just plain cooking the wine.

an inch and a half of well seated, sound cork is simply not a vehicle for evaporative losses.
Click to expand...

You're right-the corks that are going to dry out(German wines from the 80s and 90s in particular) are going to dry out anyway. Wine keeps very well in a normal fridge but the stacking element is a big issue, as is shelf strength.
 
the answer to cork shrinkage could be answered with a micrometer and a handful of corks. just measure the corks, put them in the fridge, and measure them after a year or so. i don't own a micrometer, so i leave the experiment to others.
 
I have had stuff long term in a small wine fridge ("fridge" in the sense that it's just like a mini-fridge, except meant for wine) and also in cabinets that blow cool air out of an A/C-like unit. The fridge produced a number of surprising problems and bad bottles. I don't know why. I would spring for the cool air blowing option instead. 100-count is close to the size at which those become an option - maybe the minimum is more like 150, I dunno. Pretty sure all the ones made these days accommodate all the normal bottle types.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top