Hi everyone. I’m new here and have been having problems with my 9 year old Artevino Oxygen wine fridge which I purchased in 2016. It’s a 200 bottle single zone and I have about 140 bottles in there. Long story short it stopped working and couldn’t keep temperature with ice forming in the back.
While emptying out the fridge for the technician my bottom two shelves have signs of wood rot and some of my bottles and labels have mold on them. Mainly the ones that were in the back. As far as I can tell, the corks look fine and there’s no odor.
This is my first wine fridge and so I have a few concerns:
Will my affected bottles be okay? I wiped them down with a damp paper towel but I’m wondering if I should use rubbing alcohol? How should I clean out the fridge?
How do I find replacement shelves? Will Eurocave shelves work with Artevino? They are sliding shelves.
Hoping my fridge can be fixed, how do I prevent this in the future? The fridge is in my garage and I live in Southern California so it’s not really humid. The only thing I can think of is that there was a good 1-2 days of rain last month and it was more humid in the garage than usual when it rains.
Received one helpful suggestion (thanks @Troy_Stark) on top of the usual comedy
I removed the offending racks, cut away the fungus, sprayed racks down with a fungicide, cleaned, dried it. All good. Bottles with moldy labels taste great.
No recurrence now I’m more careful not to let bottles press against the inner back wall.
Thank you. The technician came out to look at it and said there is definitely a freon leak but he looked all over and couldn’t find any way to get to the evaporator. I’m wondering if there’s another place I can see if this unit is serviceable or am I screwed and have to buy a new one?
I also have an artevino in SoCal with the same mold problem on a lower shelf. Mine is located in a fully conditioned space so the garage location is not likely at fault. There are also signs of excessive condesation at the bottom of the interior. It is a two zone and only the lower zone has worked ever since I bought it used. I don’t think that these issues are related only because my former Vinotemp had no cooling issue but the same mold issue. Like others I just periodically pull the offending shelf, spray it down woth non-bleach mold cleaner, and wipe anything off the surface. I’ve never had a similar issue with my real Eurocave (my Artevino is also branded Eurocave - I understand this is a US market thing).
As to your other question, the shelves are not interchangeable and I’ve not seen a source for Artevino shelves.
I’m not sure this last point is correct. I bought an Artvino III from Costco, my understanding is that this is made in the same factory as Eurocave (ie nearly identical) just rebranded for a lower price point for Costco.
I have purchased Eurocave shelving, and it is compatible with my Artvino, you just need to do a little research to see which Eurocave model your Artvino corresponds to.
You may be right - their sites now both refer to production in Fourmies, France. I don’t know if the info that I found previously was incorrect or whether they have consolidated. At the time I had found references to different factories in different parts of France - the Artevino facility having by acquired by Eurocave at some point. I had also found reference that in other parts of the world the Artevino units were still marketed under that brand but in the U.S. they are rebranded as Eurocave. That all made sense to me because my Artevino (Eurocave) and Eurocave (Eurocave) units are different in every way.
