Question about Eurocave cellars

I currently have a cheap 20 bottle wine fridge/cellar and looking to upgrade as I want to store more wines for aging. I notice the Eurocave models tend to say they hold “x” number of Bordeaux-style wine bottles. Has anyone had any problems storing 750mL bottles of other shapes such as the German riesling-style bottle?

I have an N’Finity 200 bottle fridge and unless you have full height adjustable tray locations in the fridge (I’ve not seen that yet), you’ll have less of a problem storing riesling bottles, but anything not as slim as a Bordeaux bottle at any point, and you’ll experience high levels of frustration trying to stuff in the bottle count because the pull out tray system means you cannot really do multilevel stacking. Given that I have less then ⅓ Bordeaux bottles, and the way things work, I find I can get about 130 out of 200. TBH I have a lot of “bigger” bottles and magnums throw everything out of balance [wow.gif]

Pro hint: you can stack on the floor of the unit so if you remove trays, do so on the bottom if you have a case or two of one wine you will not need to dig around to find. If you remove one more, remove the top tray.

So the Burgundy style bottles are more of a problem I take it?

Yes. The good news, if any, is that Eurocave’s latest models have all kinds of cool ways you can configure and put in specific kinds of horizontally adjustable trays and trays made for stacking. If I were buying new, I would definitely go Eurocave, I got my N’Finity for super cheap!

Le cache won’t have these issues fwiw. This is the reason I went with the le cache over the eurocave.

David…Which Le Cache do you own?

Brian - I’m hesitant to reply since I know that once I tell you I have had a Eurocave 266 for over 20 yrs with no problems, it will likely die in the next few weeks :slight_smile:

I have 5 roller shelves, two wooden shelves with stacked storage, and more on the lowest level at the bottom. I have a mix of new and old world cab, syrah, zin, and pinot noir and can fit about 170 bottles if I’m creative. I only have a few long-necked German bottles and they fit in both the roller shelves and the bottom. I suspect if you had a full shelf of them, they would not fit flat.

Hope that helps.

I also have a Eurocave 266 but have only had for 6-7 years. I have the newer style of shelves that adjust (Sommelier series shelves maybe?). I have had ~210 bottles in mine before but it was fully utilized. I have 6 pull out shelves and two fixed shelves. I also have a small space under the bottom shelf that I use for german/alsace bottles as that area is not as deep as the full cabinet and fit around 14 bottles there. I’ll say that IMO, the long skinny bottles are the hardest to store as they don’t fit well in the rolling shelves unless you have something short and fat on the other end of it to balance it out. They will fit in the rolling shelves, but you might lose a bottle or two of capacity. All that being said, I am 100% happy with mine and I don’t believe there is a better solution as anytime you need to store things of different shapes and sizes, it isn’t easy. I’ll also add that I have my top shelf configured with enough clearance at the top to hold burgundy shaped magnums when I need to.

In general, whatever you buy, get something 50% bigger than you think you need as you will have it filled up faster than you think. I started with a Eurocave 266 and thought it would be plenty for a long time and now have that plus three 24-case lockers in a dedicated wine storage facility and am currently out of room.

Cheers!

I’ve also got a Eurocave Comfort 266; I opted to put sliding shelves in for all but the bottom and top shelf. I max out at just under 170 bottles.

I’ve found I can get about 10 Cali Cabs per shelf, and 11 Pinot/Burgundy. It’s a pretty rare day when I get 12 to a shelf. And I agree with Tom above that long skinny bottles are a pain.

But I’m happy with the performance.

No issues. Good luck.

Cheers!

I have owned a Eurocave 266 for 20 years or so, with 4 stationary shelves that each hold 2 rows of bottles stacked and 8 rolling shelves each holding 1 row. First, it should be noted that the “266,” referring to the capacity, is based on total BULK storage (bottom to top) without intervening shelves. And secondly, while the rolling shelves (the ones in my unit) are designed to hold 12 bottles per row, there are many bottles in my collection that make that impossible. The height to the shoulder as well as the diameter will reduce that capacity to 10-11 bottles per row. I do a little better with the stationary ones. So effectively, my Eurocave holds about 180-190 bottles. But the unit has served me well and I’m very happy with it.