Wine Fridge or Wine Cellar? please help

Hi everyone,

I’m a newbie to wineberserkers and was hoping for some guidance and help. I have been enjoying wine for a while now but my wife and I have recently begun to start collecting and hoping to age some of the wine we have bought. We tend to have wines that we like to hold onto for a special occasion type situations and then we have regular wine that we pick up at the store and what not that we drink on a regular night. Our “collection” (hardly a collection compared to many on here) consists of about 26 wines right now, most are ones that we want to hold onto for a while. several possibly for longer than 5 years. We also have more coming from our recent trip to Italy as well as 2 shipments from our winery. we purchased a Allavino CWR-29-2SD Cascina Series 29 Bottle Dual Zone Wine Refrigerator thinking 29 bottles would be enough but we have reached that maximum (the fridge does not even hold 29 bottles depending on size, etc). The fridge has worked great so far, it’s got digital temp control and the temp is pretty accurate ( say +/- 2 degrees). It has wooden racks but no humidity control. We plan to expand our collection so we are looking for something larger. I have been reading up about the differences between wine fridge and wine cellar and that for wines that are being held 5+ years, wine cellar is the way to go. The only issue is that all the wine cellars I’ve looked at (I keep hearing that Le Cache is the one to go) but the least expansive one Le Cache BILD 1400 has a 170 bottle cap. I was wondering if there are any recommendations for anything smaller, around 70-100 bottles that anyone can recommend that would be good for long term aging. Most of the smaller ones I’ve looked at are identified as “wine fridge cellar” so not sure if the cellar word is just thrown in there for marketing or it’s an actual cellar. I may have rambled a bit but any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all!

-Ali

Check out Costco for the Artevino 2 by Eurocave. It stores in the range you’re looking for and its under 1,900 (1,699 if they run a sale).

Welcome to the Forum. There are many good options in the way of “electric cellars”, but please bear in mind that if you’re looking to lay in a stock of wines requiring 20 or 30 or 40 or more years, you will need to replace the “electronics”, as they will fail, eventually. Same like a refrigerator, because it IS a refrigerator, cellars are in the ground and cooled by virtue of their depth underground, and some people have cellars.

Any modern wine refrigerator is good, and it doesn’t matter whether or not you want to keep 20 bottles or 20,000, you’re welcome on this Forum.

Nick,

Thanks much for the reply and the warm welcome. I totally understand that any electric wine cellar/cooler/fridge is going to only last a certain amount of time because as you said, it is in the end, electric. I just want to make sure that what I get is going to be good enough to age a few bottles longer term. I mean at this point, I have about 3 or so bottles that are capable of being aged long term while the rest are more for 5-7 years and some to drink now. So I was looking for something that will allow me to use it as dual-purpose incase I get more bottles that are meant to be laid down for a longer term. From what I have read, many of the wine coolers like N’Finity and similar brands are not meant for longer term aging because you can’t control the humidity although I assume most of a certain level of humidity already. I was looking at the Le Cache BILD 1400 which about $1600 but not sure if I need that and can get away with something along the lines of N’Finity or so that range a bit less.

thanks, I’ll check it out to see if it’s on sale.

Just an advise : if you want to have great wines in your cellar (that need several decades of cellar ) you better buy a great mark like eurocave.
If you will drink your wine before 5 years, no problem

Because i had some electric winecellars and wines decline a little bit after a decade.
( I ve been renting a professional cellar in france since 15years and i can see differences)

I have a Eurocave and it is great, already full, but great. My advice is to buy bigger than you think you need, you will fill it sooner rather than later.

+1
But asked myself when number of bottles became hudge (between rent a professional cellar or buy another one electric winecellar )
,

An older thread I know, but for any new readers Eurocave are great, but Sub Zero wine coolers are also very nice :slight_smile:

Ali,

Are you going to be living in the house you are in for the next 20 years? Are you located where you have or could have an underground basement/cellar? If you have to be or plan to be mobile then choose a highly rated refrigeration unit and replace it as necessary. If you are in the house you plan on being in for the next 20 years then go large. Kinda like buying a boat. They are never big enough if you use them all the time.

Plan on at least 3x the storage you think you’ll need. Lol.