Wine Bottle Refrigerator And Wine Cellar Not Equivalent

Many sales people and manufacturers try to give the impression that a wine bottle refrigerator is a direct substitute for a good wine cellar, but there are significant differences between the two. Despite glowing claims about stable temperatures and internal humidity, you simply can't store a bottle of wine for as long in a refrigerator as you can in a genuine wine cellar, and you certainly can't age wine for the long term. For one thing, even though these wine storage refrigerators keep the internal temperature more stable than that of a regular kitchen fridge, they don't eliminate all potential fluctuations.

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.

Nor does a wine bottle refrigerator usually control humidity as well as its advanced press might claim. The few that really try use methods that aren't very reliable, so no manufacturer has truly solved the humidity problem yet. And while a glass door on the front of the wine cabinet itself may be decorative, and display the wines nicely, it may also be letting in harmful light. White wines, particularly, can begin to deteriorate in mere hours if they are stored in clear bottles. So if the wine refrigerator's glass door is not tinted with special material that can screen UV light, the wine can suffer damage unless it's consumed relatively quickly.

Even when they give glowing wine refrigerator reviews, sites like the Galt Buying Guide (www.galttech.com) or www.modernwinecellar.com always recognize the difference between a wine bottle refrigerator and a genuine wine cellar. Many of the refrigerators work very well at keeping regular wine safe and drinkable for up to a year. But people interested in aging a wine for the long term should recognize that even the best wine refrigerator will probably fall short in performance.

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Wine Cellars As Furniture
However, it's when you find these refrigerated cabinets looking indeed like cabinets, which may be in upright or credenza styles that the "furniture" aspect really comes into its own. Being larger units, they sometimes hold many hundreds of bottles of wine, so they are favored by those with serious collections. These wine cellars are usually crafted from polished wood with ornate tinted glass doors.

Wine Cellar Rooms And Wine Refrigerators
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.

A Wine Cooler Refrigerator Versus The Kitchen Fridge
Even the wines themselves ideally require different storage temperatures, which is why some people may have both a white and a red wine refrigerator. Red wines should properly be stored at about 60 degrees, with whites cooler at around 48 degrees. Both temperatures, incidentally, are higher than what is recommended in typical kitchen refrigerators used for food, which is about 40 degrees.