Something at the beginning.
What is a single/dual zone wine cellar fridge? As we all know household refrigerator, it’s used for storing food and keep it fresh. A wine fridge is a perfect household appliance for storing your reds, whites, champagnes, and other wines.
3AWineCellar, as a wine storage expert. According to our experience & products knowledge. We’d love to share some guidance of how to choose an electric wine cellar and some information about the wine refrigerator. It’ll be useful and helpful when you need to purchase a wine storage appliance for your favorite wines.
There are many factors that you need to consider of selecting the suitable wine cooler for all of your needs. It will include capacity, cabinet size, temperature zones, cooling way, shelves style & material, and the door function, etc. The better the wines that are in your collection, the longer you’re maybe going to age them, so a suitable wine cellar fridge is very important for reaching their full potential.
Let’s go.
Wine storage basice
Some information about storage wine we need to know before ordering a wine fridge.
1) Cooler temperatures are key, but not too cool.
Temperatures higher than 70° F will age the wine more quickly than is usually desirable. And if it gets much hotter, your wine may get “cooked,” resulting in flat aromas and flavors. On the contrary, too cool to age wine.
2) Stable temperature is the most important factor.
More important than worrying about achieving a perfect 55° F is avoiding the landmines of rapid, extreme or frequent temperature swings. A stable temperature will help wine aging well.
3) Ultraviolet rays can damage wine.
Sunlight, it can pose a potential problem for long-term storage. The sun’s UV rays can degrade and prematurely age wine. One of the reasons why vintners use black glass bottles? They’re like sunglasses for wine.
4) Humidity is also important, but it won’t make a big difference.
Dry air will dry out the corks, which would let air into the bottle and spoil the wine. Conversely, extremely damp conditions can promote mold. This won’t affect a properly sealed wine, but can damage the labels. Anywhere between 50 % and 80% humidity is considered safe.
5) The less vibration, the better.
Vibration could damage wine in the long term by speeding up the chemical reactions in the liquid.
6) Household refrigerator VS. Wine refrigerator.
Someone may be wondering whether or not we can store our wine in a household fridge. For a short time, you can(about 1-2 hours, before the dinner.) but if for long time storage, you better don’t. there are some reasons why we shouldn’t store wine in a household refrigerator.
- In order to ensure your food safety, the household refrigerator temperature range is design at 32-40°F. Although this keeps your beer, juice and milk at the ideal temperature, it’s too cold for wine, the best temperature range for wine is 45-65 ° F.
- Your fridge is too busy – if you have an active family, your fridge door is being open frequently. All this action will produce unnecessary vibrations and affect the wine.
- Household refrigerators’ humidity is lower than a wine fridge, which is not good for bottles cork.
- Both of them cooling by a compressor. However, the compressor used in the wine refrigerator has a unique design to absorb any vibration.
- Food has a unique smell that may penetrate into the cork of wine, giving it an unpleasant taste.
| Wine cellar fridge | Household fridge |
| Special for storing wine at ideal temperature and humidity | The main purpose is to store a variety of foods, drinks, etc. |
| Keep an ideal humidity range at 60%-70% for wine. | Humidity below 20%, which will cause the cork dry and the wine oxidize. |
| It can store a variety of wines, and it doesn’t affect each bottle | When stored with food, there will be many different odors. |
| Various sizes are available | Usually available in a standard size for kitchen |
| A large capacity up to 300-500 bottles. | Not enough special space for wine bottles when full of food. |
| Usually, cheaper than a household fridge. | General, more expensive than a wine fridge. |
| Display your favorite bottles through a full glass door with a soft inner led light. | Can not see anything outside the fridge. |
| Special rack/shelves design for loading bottles. | Not rack or shelves for bottles |
| Natural aging of wine | slowing the maturation of wine |
| Available cooling by thermoelectric or compressor. | Cooling by compressor only. |
How should I choose?
1) Thermoelectric wine cellar or compressor cooling cellar fridge?
Here we’d talk about the 2 different cooing ways of wine refrigerators. One kind is not necessarily better than the other. Your personal preference, budget, and the needs of your collection will be important factors that help you choose which kind of cooler is best for you.
A thermoelectric wine cellar is quieter and cheaper, and with a small capacity, it doesn’t above 50 bottles. But its cooling capacity is weak. Ensure you’ll place the Thermoelectric wine cellar in a lower temperature room during the hot summer.
The compressor wine cellar fridge pulls down the temperature more efficiently and more expensive. With a large capacity which can up to several hundred bottles. But it’s heavy, if you move a lot, or you don’t have enough free space to install it, you’re better to choose the Thermoelectric wine cellar.
2) What size wine cellar fridge should I buy?
First, ask yourself the following questions:
- How much space do I have for the wine cabinet?
- Will I put this device under the counter, above the counter, or freestanding?
- How many wine collection you have?
- How many bottles do I plan to buy in the future?
- We recommend that you choose a wine refrigerator with 20-55% more storage capacity than the wine you have on hand. You will have enough space for your collection to grow and enough wine to entertain at hand.
Most wine refrigerators on the market store an average of 20-30 bottles of wine. It can meet most wine beginner’s needs.
For enthusiastic wine collectors, large capacity wine refrigerators can store 100 to 300 bottles of wine
Volume is one of the main reasons why wine refrigerator has more advantages than traditional wine cellar; There are all kinds of sizes in the marketing, you will find a suitable model for you.
3) Free-standing vs. built-in wine cellar.
Free-standing. If a unit is specified as free-standing, this means that it should not be recessed into cabinetry.
Built-in wine cellar. If a unit is built-in, this means that the refrigerator can be recessed into cabinetry while still following specific clearance guidelines to ensure it exhausts properly.
4) Single-zone or dual zone wine cellar?
If you only collect one type of wine (red or white), then a single-zone cooler should suffice. If you have an equal love for both red and white wines, then a dual zone wine cellar will benefit you since you can set one zone at a lower temperature than the other. Additionally, dual zone wine cellar presents the option to set one zone to storage temperature and the other to serving temperature. If you anticipate you will be uncorking a bottle in the near future, you can simply move your wine from the storage to service zone for about 30 minutes to an hour.
5) How about the rack/shelves?
Usually, there are two kinds of racks are available for the wine fridge. One is flat, another one is display. A wine cooler with full of flat racks can load more bottles than a wine cooler with full of display shelves.
But come with a display rack, you can see your favorite wine label through a glass door.
It’s available comes with flat rack and display in a 3AWINECELLAR big wine fridge.
So there is some information about wine fridge and how to choose a suitable unit. Wine coolers now have many shapes, styles, sizes, capacity, from a 6-bottle unit that hangs on the wall, to a small built-in kitchen wine cooler, to a 300 bottles large capacity.
Before the end
If you still can’t find a suitable wine refrigerator for your space, why not try to custom one? 3AWineCellar can design&customized a special wine fridge/cellar according to your details needs, your budget, and your situation. We use high-end stainless steel for your cabinet. Whether it’s a single temperature zone, dual zone wine cellar, a big capacity up to 1000 bottles or a small capacity fit for your small kitchen. Whether it’s for office or for house. any size and style can be customized in 3AWineCellar.
