EuroCave. Mold. Any advice?

WINE TALK
#21

I was hoping to never have to utilize the advice from this thread, but found exactly the same problem with one of my Eurocaves as I was digging through for holiday wines today. Bottom third, back row. I think in my case it may have been due to the door not sealing properly.

Brad - how did things work out for you after the cleanup effort? Any recurrence? What did you end up using as cleaner?

Thanks,
Jim

#22

Jim,
I pulled everything out, and cleaned bottles/labels/racks/sidewalls/etc with hot water. Also used a touch of vinegar on the worst areas. With some of the most impacted labels (maybe 10 bottles) I simply pulled the labels off, taped on the wine/vintage, and put them in the mental “drink in 2014” category. On another 10 bottles, getting the mold off the labels degraded the labels, and again I’ll drink these up this year. In the end, maybe a quarter of the bottles had any issues, and only half of those were severely impacted.
No recurrence so far. As far as cause, I’m not positive but suspect one or a combo of the following two issues. One, the theory on bottles touching the back/sides is not totally far fetched, as the impacted section is the only place where many bottles were in fact touching the back and sides. I’ve since thinned out this section to alleviate that, and stopped jamming bottles in the bottom section that was with out rolling drawers. Another possibility is I discovered the small charcoal filter was missing from the back wall. Not sure how that happened as I’m pretty hands on with my Eurocave. So maybe that was allowing warm air and moisture to seep in the back and causing issues. Obviously that has been fixed. At any rate, so far so good.

#23

My friend had this same problem in his Eurocave 266…

We emptied the unit completely, cleaned it from top to bottom both inside and out. We wiped down the interior and affected areas with concrobium. You can pick it up at Home Depot for $9

Make sure you thoroughly clean out the drain holes and the entire unit and replace the carbon filter. We actually just picked up some aquarium carbon at petsmart and swapped out the carbon that way. This was 2 year ago and it works perfectly now with no signs of the mold returning.

This took two of us a couple hours to do, but the results were great.

#24

change the charcoal filter on the Eurocave.

#25

Tucson wines?? [snort.gif]

#26

The easiest, cleanest way…straight hydrogen peroxide.

We have this issue in our store, as we have a big walk in wine room, and b/c the warm air outside the room meets the cold air inside the room (behind the condensing units), we just use straight HP and it comes right off. It’s mahogany too, so it had some staining, which we sanded down, and it was good as new.

#27

Resurrecting an old thread… I’ve had two 200btl EuroCave Artevino III units (from Costco) for a little over a year, and just a few days ago I noticed a pretty big mold problem in both of them. Mostly growing along the back, back corners, and underside of the shelves. Some specks and spots on a few bottles but it doesn’t appear to have affected the wine much. Nonetheless, I need to completely clean out both units and try to prevent this from happening again. I started monitoring humidity since noticing the mold, and it’s hovering around 87%, which is obviously too high. There are spots in back corners where I can see large water droplets hanging off the shelves. Based on the wisdom from a few old threads, I’m planning on the following steps and would appreciate feedback:

  1. Remove all bottles and shelves, wipe down the bottles with a dry cloth, wipe down the inside of the unit and all shelves with a hydrogen peroxide solution. Let them dry out for at least a few hours and replace.
  2. I had been really careful about keeping bottles from touching the back of the unit, but only by a couple cm, and it sounds like that’s not enough. This time keep them closer to an inch from the back to improve airflow (not sure this is possible with some larger bottles but will give it a shot).
  3. The setup instructions call for you to drop a glass of water in the bottom of the fridge to help set humidity after you’ve plugged in the unit. After this “reset”, I’ll probably halve that amount, if not even less than that.
  4. Monitor humidity from the start and if too high, find a humidor-like solution (absorbent beads?) to reduce humidity to a more desirable level in the 60-65% range.
  5. Try to reduce humidity in the room the fridges are in, which is an unfinished basement. I have a dehumidifier running constantly down there but it’s a little overmatched at the moment. Humidity down there is about 75-80% at the moment, and it’s been pretty wet out the last couple weeks.

I’m not sure if the fridges getting to 87% is a recent thing - my A/C has been busted for a couple weeks, so without airflow, humidity is higher than it normally would be with better ventilation and airflow. But I’m not sure if mold grows that fast either. Likely the unit has had high humidity for a long while. Appreciate any tips for how to start lower and keep it lower!

#28

I’m also curious if anyone with this Artevino model has been using the EuroCave charcoal filters with them. There’s a solid plastic cap that says “do not remove” where the EuroCave filters would normally go, so I’m not sure if fiddling with that is a good idea. I emailed Wine Enthusiast but no response yet.

#29

I also have a Artevino III from Costco I bought over a year ago. I haven’t experienced any mold, but then again that may be because I didn’t add any water at the bottom of the unit. What I have noticed is that there is condensation in the back walls; I’ve read that on this Board that this is normal as it contributes to the humidity. I’ll take a look again this weekend to see if there are any mold spots in the corners of the unit and under the shelves. I keep it between 57-59 degrees. Perhaps you can try not adding any water at the bottom of the unit and see if that helps.

1 Like
#30

Ok. So I do have mold in the unit. I looked around in the back and yes, there was mold in the back portion of the rack. Nothing on the bottles. The mold was not a lot but still present. I went to get some “Mold Control” spray and a bucket of DampRid. Cleaned out each rack, wiped it down with the spray, cleaned out the unit, wiped down the moisture, put the bottles back in and inserted the bucket of DampRid in the middle of the unit. Lets see what results we get in a few weeks. I’m still not putting any water at the bottom. Will report back.

#31

I had mold in a home fridge a few years back and the only culprit I found was that my bottles were touching the back on the unit where the coolant from the compressor runs through. This causes the bottles to get unnecessarily cold and when the unit turns off creates condensation between compressor cycles. After a thorough cleaning with a mild detergent and cloth, just make sure you don’t have the bottles touching the back of the unit. This should help even though it seems immaterial at first glance