Building a new house, and looking like a dedicated cellar may be a tough road to hoe … so will probably stick with a mix of refrigerated storage at home for most bottles and professional storage for the super high end stuff. Our architect has suggested - for aesthetic reasons - SubZero unit(s) in a butler’s pantry as it will be able to be customized to fit how the rest of the kitchen looks. I can’t find the same kind of data on SZ units as I can on Eurocave. SZ clearly makes nice stuff, so not super worried about their ability to hold temperatures, but mainly I want to make sure that their wine storage does at least a decent job holding humidity without having to “hack it” by doing the wet sponge thing.
How long are you planning on storing wine in the unit? If you are talking <5 years I wouldn’t worry about it. If you are doing more than that I would move to pro storage.
Yeah … I’d like to be able to hold bottles longer than 5 years without worry at home. Won’t be storing any bottles that I’d cry over - those will go to pro storage - but I also don’t want to spend a bunch of money on something that doesn’t mature wine properly.
I looked into buying the Sub Zeros for my house and ultimately went down the EuroCave path. Mostly because of the humidity. I’ve moved 70% to offsite storage and only left daily drinkers or stuff I expect to drink in a relatively short amount of time (5 years is my arbitrary “short amount of time” window). The offsite choice for me is about not disturbing the wine. In a fridge I am more apt to fiddle.
I have a subzero 427G in the kitchen. My cellar is passive and in the basement so this was purchased more to fit the kitchen design than it was for long-term storage. We’ve had it for a little over 2-years so far with no problems but I haven’t bothered to check the humidity. Nothing stays In It long enough for humidity to be a concern.
It will sit on the ground floor of a house in Florida so no basement - right on the slab, essentially. I did look at Le Cache, but the only unit that somewhat fits the bill is this one: Le Cache Wine Cabinet Loft 2400 #2334 | Le Cache Wine Cabinets
I suppose I could put two of these side by side with a left and right pull, but I don’t think that’s quite as attractive as the SZ (And neither has the humidification/filtration of the EC). I guess the other option is to basically custom build what is essentially a cellar that’s just a Le Cache-like wine cabinet with a cooling unit and really have the cabinet makers build it into the aesthetic of the house.
I picked up an older le cache “vault”, similar to this: Le Cache Wine Cabinet Vault #881 | Le Cache Wine Cabinets and have been thinking about sanding it down and attaching kitchen cabinet panels to simulate a built-in fridge with panels. If you did the panels on your fridge in the kitchen, and all was painted to match, it would look very similar and would blend in with the rest of the kitchen. You can get the le cache’s in different sizes, and the one i have is 38” wide, so only slightly wider than a standard fridge (36”). Mine is 28” deep with the doors, which is deeper than a “built-in” fridge like SZ, but about the same as a free-standing fridge. You wont have any glass to see the bottles, if that matters to you (it doesnt to me).
We dont have the space in our current kitchen, and when I picked up the le cache, this wasnt my original intention, but I may attempt it when we move to a house with a bigger kitchen in a couple years. Just a thought.