I have three wine fridges whose stated capacities range from 100-300 bottles. I don’t have that many wines in any of them and part of the reason is that I’m using too many shelves. Most of my shelves have 2 layers of wine bottles. But I have some single layers too. Over several years, I’ve added fridges when I ran out of space. Once they sat for a few days, I just started putting bottles on shelves. I organized each shelf by varietal, but didn’t move or remove shelves to maximize the space. Now most of my shelves have extra space above the wine but not enough space for another layer of bottles.
So for those of you with wine fridges in this size range, how many bottle layers do you put on each shelf? More broadly, how did you organize your wine fridge?
I have a 200-bottle Artevino III, in which I can fit about 180 bottles.
I have three shelves at the bottom that are each 2-3 layers high, for wines that I definitely don’t want to touch for at least a year.
I then have four shelves that are each one layer, for drinking this year.
And my top shelf can be stacked 2-3 layers high, and that’s where I put my “incoming” wines that have yet to be assigned. Once a year I sort through everything and move stuff around as needed.
If I had 3, I’d use two as maximum capacity, very few shelves to put wine I wanted to rest. The third I’d use most of the shelves and have wines ready to drink organized in a way that I could easily access everything.
I sorta have this with a basement cellar holding 600 or so, then an upstairs frig that has maybe 100-120 bottles. Those I pull from basement periodically.
Before my cellar, I had 3. One was long term aging and I never opened it unless adding and rarely subtracting. That was at the lowest I could hold a temp, around 56. The second was drink near-term white and that was 60. And the other was drink near-term reds, and that was 64. That worked for me and my drinking habits for where I liked wine my wine temps.
There are quite a few configurations shown in Eurocave manual. Mine are 4-6 bottles high on 4 shelves in addition to bottom rack. Works perfectly for me. Holds a lot of bottles…I’m thinking 150-165 per unit. Beechwood shelving.
Also consider that your shelving decisions should ultimately also be a function of how you like to drink. For wine that you plan to age long term, there should be no issue with stacking 4 bottles high, but if you’re looking to store short time drinkers, having to dig through a 4 high stack can be quite annoying. In those case more shelving at the detriment of storage space maximisation would likely be better
Thanks everyone. I use the 100 bottle fridge for this year’s drinking and have to reload around July. It’s good to know I can go 4 bottles deep in the other two. That’s where I have wine for aging.