I am looking to purchase my first wine refrigerator/cellar for maturing wines. I have two low end wine coolers that are not made for long term use and want to get something to hold some wines for long term cellaring. I have been doing research on units and have come down to these two. Everything I have read about Eurocave has been fairly positive so I am fairly sure that unit will be extremely solid. I did a prior search on the wineberserkers boards and couldn’t find much info on the WE coolers/cellars. My main concern is that the humidity won’t be held constant and that the unit won’t last. Obviously if the prices were even close I would go with the Eurocave 100% of the time, but I just wanted to see if anyone had any experience with the WE cellars. I am leaning heavily towards the Eurocave, but if the WE units get rave reviews and are close in terms of performance I would definitely like to save $1000 dollars and spend it on wine. Thanks in advance for the help. Here are the units.
I had a smaller wine enthusiast classic for a few months but it didn’t do a great job of holding the temp constant. They have good customer service and allowed me to return and upgrade for a eurocave and I’m so glad I did. One recommendation on the eurocave though, I’d highly recommend the large. They fill up sk much quicker than you’d think… They frequently have specials or units available in their outlet for a good chunk off, so that the pricing would be in line with the medium.
I have one of each. They are both the smaller units about 40" tall and hold anywhere from 60-100 bottles each. The slide out shelves on the Classis are pretty poor, but other than that I have no complaints. The Eurocave is about 10 years old and the WE Classic about 5. Both hold temperature rock steady and are very quiet. The classic was too much of a bargain at the time to spend three times as much on another Eurocave to go into my garage at our condo. If we had already vacated the condo for our house I would have gone the other direction.
Thanks Michael, struggling with same decision myself, namely is it worth paying 2x vs the 166 bottle WE fridge (a bit less than 2x adjusted for capacity). I’m less concerned with perfect temp / humidity maintenance, as I’m not long term aging lots of very expensive wine, more just medium term aging / keeping wine out of the regular temperature of my home. That said, if the Artevino is also far more durable / reliable, would probably pay for itself over the WE model.
Also, anyone know if these Costco fridges regularly go on sale? Not in a rush so wondering if I should wait and see if they knock ~$200 of the Artevino at some point
Thanks Michael. I didn’t come across that one. I will def do some research. I’m pulling the trigger today. My main question is whether that one is made for long term storage/maturing. Since it’s a euro ave I assume it is. Is that one you currently have? Thanks again.
I pulled the trigger on this one. Thanks again Michael. The Artevino 3 model even has the charcoal filters if you want to utilize them for long term cellaring/maturing. Seems like a no-brainer. I am very happy I decided to post here before purchasing. For the same amount of storage with a “real” eurocave it would have cost almost double the price. I will keep you all posted with how the process goes .
My WE fridge keeps very consistent temps … but it’s not super consistent from back to front. The back, as you might imagine, is colder. It’s almost a 10 degree delta from bottles kept against the back (~52) to the bottles kept right against the door (~60) in my cold, dark basement. That said, the bottles at 60 stay 60, and the bottles at 52 stay 52, so for my short and medium term consumption bottles (with 5 years), I’m not too worried about it. The stuff I’m planning to age for decades lives in professional storage.
Here’s a photo from my Temp Stick from the past week. The small spike is when I had the fridge open for 20-30 minutes to do some re-arranging/labeling. The temp stick lives about 2/3 of the way forward along the side about halfway down.
That is very nice Justin. I need to get one of those to monitor my collection. Unfortunately there isn’t much in terms of professional storage around Indiana. I definitely looked for some type of professional storage, but I just couldn’t find anything close. I could have it shipped off to Chicago or something like that, but once you factor in the shipping from the storage to my house, the cost of the professional storage, etc, it would likely add too much to the price of the wine to warrant it. I also don’t have the type of collection that likely warrants professional storage. It may be something I look into in the future.
I am going to get another unit just in case something happens and/or for when this unit inevitably dies. That way I have somewhere to put the really expensive stuff (to me really expensive is $150+) in the down time between larger units.
Honestly, I’m not super concerned about the temp being 55.0 at all times … I use the Temp stick for alarms if it gets too hot or too cold (I think I have range set such that below 45 or above 65 will alert me). That way if we’re out of town I can at least ask a neighbor to come rescue my wine before it’s ruined. My nightmare before having it was the fridge going haywire and freezing my wine.
My pro storage is in DC and I’m in central VA. It’s 1-day ground shopping, so for a $250+ bottle, the added transport cost is pretty minimal — especially since they save me money on transport costs in the first place from auction houses and CA wineries. Usually costs me like $15 to ship 3 bottles to my house in VA or like $35/case… so $5/btl max and down to like $3/bottle on a case … Not bad at all. Is there anywhere close enough to you where ground shipping is a 1-day service?
I actually an not sure yet. I looked in Chicago because that is somewhat close. I am located near Indianapolis Indiana so I assume there is something within 1 day. I needed a better home unit anyways, but I will definitely look into professional storage as my collection grows. I need to do a lot more research on professional storage to be honest. I didn’t really factor in the cost savings from auction houses.
I wonder if anyone has ever removed the sliding shelves in a Artevino / Eurocave and replaced with Le Cache style racks, seems like that would be the best of both worlds. The Eurocave shelves would really annoy me.
I think people stress out a bit too much about temperature. My main cellar is passive much of the year with a bit of cooling in the summer and ranges from 50-60 (with more or less natural humidity). I have a lecache upstairs and a few other wine fridges that I use for convenience. I’ve stored wine since the early 2000s which has been fine. My parents have a passive cellar in WI that ranges a bit more broadly, probably 50-65, and we’ve had wine from the 80s from there recently that has been spectacular.
I’m not sure if you could get double deep racking inside a Eurocave — at least most of them. If they’re optimized for bottles overlapping (facing opposite directions) to get 2 “deep,” then that means they can’t fit 2 bottles deep punt to cork without any overlap. Maybe if one of the models is deeper?
The ultimate system for Eurocave would be some sort of sliding rack system where you could set the height to a custom size based on what bottles you’re storing. Being able to remove shelves helps, but then you’re still wasting space somewhere. A mix of that and their “somm’s hand” shelving - which is essentially the same thing, but horizontally for bottles within the rack - would maximize storing potential for a fridge.
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