Small wine coolers may be the best route to go if you’re just getting started on a modest wine collection.
Certainly these are a better storage solution than throwing yourself energetically into the purchase of one of the most expensive wine cellar refrigerators on the market just because a reviewer says it’s the best.
If you don’t know for sure that you’re going to be a serious collector, and really just want to keep a few bottles fresh for the time being, the smaller coolers are the best way to get started.
You may still feel like you have very little free space for even one of those small Avanti wine refrigerators, but you might be surprised where you can stick these wine cooling units.
If you’ve got wall space for a sturdy shelf, you might put the little fridge there, or even suspend it from the kitchen cabinetry, the way microwaves often sit these days.
Wine coolers also come in free standing units that are hardly larger than bookcases, so if you’ve got space that could accommodate a bookcase, then chances are you can fit a wine fridge there.
Of course, you’ve probably already guessed that if you enjoy wine, you’re likely going to want to expand your storage space eventually. Small wine coolers will get you started, but that’s probably not where you’re going to stop.
What these coolers will do is get you thinking about what you really need in terms of storage and functionality. This means that next time you buy one of these wine storage refrigerators, you can go larger, but also be even more discriminating about the features you want.
To read more Storing Your Collection With Wine Coolers
Those who can’t afford yet another appliance, or have no space for it, usually have no choice but to use a regular kitchen fridge to keep their wine. But a wine cooler refrigerator really is the better choice for this, if you find it possible to buy one.
Even the smallest of these wine storage coolers is likely to do a better job of keeping the optimum temperature and humidity conditions for your wine, and it will also maintain these conditions in a more consistent way.
Consistency is a key word in proper wine storage, and temperature is the major issue. The temperature in a regular kitchen refrigerator fluctuates up and down for all sorts of reasons.
Everyone is aware that their fridge turns its cooling function on and off, precisely because of these changes. Add to this the fluctuations from the door opening and closing so often, and there’s no real consistency at all.
Nor do most people even know what the actual temperature is in the fridge to begin with. A wine cooler refrigerator allows much more control and stability than this.
Unless you’re buying quite a small wine cooler refrigerator, though, you can probably do better than compromise on the temperature between white and red wines. Many available models have dual-zone, meaning there are separate temperature zones for each type of wine.
You would store the whites in the cooler section and the reds in a slightly warmer section. But large or small, almost all versions of these wine bottle refrigerators will allow you to store your wine in rather better conditions than anything you can achieve with the kitchen fridge.
To read more Optimal Storage Of Wine With A Wine Cooler Refrigerator
A real wine cellar tends to be an underground room in which conditions are ideal for the proper storing and aging of wine. Historically, in many of these cellars or even caves, these conditions have often been so natural that the function succeeded even without any artificial climate controls.
The problem is, of course, that not everyone can create this sort of underground room in their own home, so they are left using compact wine refrigerators instead, which don’t preserve wine for nearly as long or as perfectly.
However, if they decide to use a wine room, they can still enjoy most of the functions of the original wine cellars.
One of the great advantages of this kind of wine cellar is that it can be made of prefabricated parts and brought in to take up just one corner of a person’s home, perhaps in a basement or even a spare bedroom.
It can have a simple design or have decorative doors and windows, and will come with locks as well for extra protection. Unlike even the best refrigerated wine cabinets, this unit can have its conditions regulated enough for aging the wine and storing it for the long term.
Smaller wine bottle refrigerators don’t need to be the only choice available to someone who has no way to extend their home or who lives in an apartment.
They can have all the benefits of a real wine cellar by adding one of these wine rooms, either in a basement corner, extra bedroom, or even a corner of a living or dining room if they have the space.
Adding refrigeration and careful climate controls, individuals can store their wine collections in rooms that recreate the effects of the original wine cellars.
To read more Better Storage With A Wine Cellar
Wine refrigerators are made to serve at least some of the purposes of the original underground wine cellars, as they store wine in cool, atmospherically controlled conditions.
Of course there are differences between a real wine cellar and one of these newer appliances that might bear the same name, because wine cellar refrigerators can’t be used for long term storage or aging of wine. But as well as keeping most wine ready to drink for several months, they now often have a dual function, which is to serve as actual furniture in the home.
You might think these wine cellars would be purely utilitarian, especially if they’re kept in a kitchen somewhere, but many models can actually be designed to be part of the larger decorative scheme of the room.
This may not be the case so much with under counter wine refrigerators that are built into the lower cabinetry like a dishwasher. Yet even that sort of wine fridge can be designed with a front panel to match either the cabinetry itself or the surfaces of the large appliances.
The primary function of these wine bottle refrigerators is the same as the long-time function of the original wine cellars whose name they often bear, which is to store and preserve wine for an extended period of time.
But they also serve functions unlike anything those cellars have ever done. As well as preserving wine, they are also being used as actual furniture, standing with other pieces as important elements in the design scheme of the entire home.
To read more Wine Cellars Decorating Your Home
There are considerable differences between even refrigerated wine cellars and a small wine refrigerator you buy to put in your kitchen.
A genuine wine cellar often doesn’t even need refrigeration, being deep enough in the ground to be cooled naturally, but whether it’s artificially cooled or not, it tends to have much more temperature, humidity and even light consistency than a wine fridge.
A wine bottle refrigerator can serve very well for keeping wine ready to drink for a few months, but for long-term storage and aging of finer wines, it is an imperfect solution.
In a compressor-based wine bottle refrigerator, you could find the temperature fluctuating up to five degrees as the compressor cycles, which could adversely affect finer wines, and not keep even the more ordinary wines stable for much longer.
Combine this problem with a plastic interior liner, and cool temperatures are not easy to maintain consistently. A thermoelectric wine refrigerator, having solid state pumps with no moving parts, will reduce both temperature fluctuations and damaging vibrations, yet doesn’t cool the wine as efficiently as a compressor-based fridge.
A person who is serious about storing wine must always differentiate between a wine cellar and the smaller refrigerated wine cabinets. No review sites, like the Galt Buying Guide (www.galttech.com) for example, will ever equate the two, recognizing that wine refrigerators are best suited only for short-term storage.
A wine bottle refrigerator will never be a full substitute for a full-fledged wine cellar, particularly when it comes to storing fine wine that needs to age for longer than a few months.
To read more Short Term Storage With A Wine Bottle Refrigerator
