Does a wine cellar at maximum capacity run more efficiently?

I’ve heard that temperature and humidity controlled wine cellars run most efficiently when they are packed to the gills. This makes a fair amount of sense to me, but I’d love to hear from others who are more in-the-know on the science behind this. Thanks!

Yes. Function of mass , along as it is not hampering any air flow.

Agree with NED - the thermal mass dampens temperature changes.

Yes, just like your refrigerator.

Yes.

Oui

Just to flesh out the concept since people are throwing thermal mass around…

The air will change temperature faster when there are extremes. The full bottles of wine will hold the cooler temperature and take longer to warm up, so fluctuations during temperature extremes are less of an issue than if you have a half empty cellar which can cool or warm up faster than a cellar full of cool bottles.

Yes

What Brent said. If you have one bottle of Coke in your fridge, when you open the door, the temp of the fridge goes up really fast. As you stand there looking at your empty shelves, the temp starts hitting room temp. It’s in the 90s where I am right now, so that’s not good.

But if your fridge was filled with bottles, the air would change temp really fast but the bottles wouldn’t change so fast. Just like when you leave a cold beer out on the patio table. It doesn’t heat up to the 90 degrees you’re feeling until after a half hour or so. So in a full fridge, the air temp changes really fast when you open the door and stand there like an idiot looking at stuff. But if it’s full, there isn’t really all that much air to displace anyway and as soon as you close it the air starts cooling down again and it comes to the desired temp before your goods have changed temp more than a degree or two.

So because the fuller fridge has more bottles it has less air to bring down to the desired temp when you open the door. And it has to work less to keep the air at the desired temp.

i agree with Ned. I’ve had my 200 bottle “cellar” backed full but it hampered air flow and the bottles on the bottom were 5 to 6 degrees warmer. There was less of a difference when there were gaps for air flow.

Hooray Science. Thanks Greg!

No, it has no bearing on the efficiency of the cellar.

Actually, it does, but I couldn’t allow the streak end; there have been 246,975 consecutive wine-related threads in which at least one person has taken a contrarian view, and I just couldn’t see that go down the drain.

Way to be a team player, Neal!

I have used this concept for years in an attempt to justify an overfull cellar.

Oooh, hadn’t thought of that angle.

Go science!

And here I thought this ‘science’ was really an evil plot by wine sellers to convince us to keep our cellars crammed full. Correlates nicely with the standard ‘build bigger than you think you’ll need’ advice.

WAIT A MINUTE !

SOMEBODY HAS TO MAKE THIS POLITICAL, before we ruin the streak !!

I think I see Dario’s next Science Fair project!!!

The other added benefit is that if the cooling unit breaks down, you’ll have much longer before it is an issue. And, with much less air space, the humidity control, if you have any, will barely have to work at all. To get the benefit without all the wine, you could easily just add some gallon water jugs or something to the space as well. Obviously you’d only have to do that until you fill up the cellar.