The Auswine Forum

I've been storing the wines I want to age in a mate's climate-controller cellar but it is a bit of an imposition to cart boxes of wine there every few months. I've been checking out a few large capacity wine fridges (200+ bottles) but I'm a bit surprised at the huge price tags, especially considering how cheap food fridges are. Food fridges have two seperate compartments and need to remove far more heat than normal wine fridges.

So what makes them more expensive?
Are they significantly more complex for some reason?
Or do Vintec, Liebherr, etc think people willing to buy wine fridges have far more disposible cash to throw around?

Suspect it's mostly your last point, although they have to maintain much higher humidity (say 60% vs the 10-20% of a std fridge), so perhaps that somehow inflates the complexity...).

And of course the economies of scale is a huge factor.

It is possible to modify a standard fridge for wine use, but it's a big effort, check google if you have time on your side.

There are of course more generic brands that do a good job for most people. I've got 4 fridges all around the 40-60 bottle mark, from cheap to medium price, they all do an excellent job, although the only 'brand name' one is a Vintec and smells chemically. I use activated carbon to reduce the smell and only keep short to medium term cellaring screwcap wines in there.

Cheers
Tim

It is also vibration reduction technology, and I believe the compressors and motors they use in these fridges are far more expensive than normal fridges.

1) Yep Dan hit it on the head re. vibration. Wine needs to avoid vibration and regular fridge compressors cause a lot of vibration which can upset the wine over the long run. Expensive wine fridges have all kinds of vibration reduction technology built into them.
2) Regular food fridges don't control humidity. By nature they tend to have very low humidity (which is why they can be used to air dry foods, uncovered, overnight). Good quality wine fridges require both humidifers and dehumidifers to be able to maintain 65% humidity regardless of outside conditions.

Some other notes about them:

- Cheap wine fridges don't use compressed refrigerant gas, they use lots of thermoelectric heat sinks (like a PC CPU heat sink). Thermoelectric have limitations (like, they can only cool about 10 degrees cooler than room temperature) however they don't have the vibration problem.
- Good quality wine fridges should also have better insulation and SHOULD have no off-gassing smalls although this is a recurrent problem with vintecss (although you'd think it would be fixed with the exorbitant prices you are paying).
- Glass door ones should have a maximum-rated UV filter on them.
- From an electricity usage perspective, the best insulation is solid door fridges (rather than glass, even though glass looks nice). Even double glazed glass is a poor insulator compared to solid insulation material.

Also keep in mind that it is bloody expensive to fix a wine fridge of any type if not under warranty.

Cheers

More on vibration if you are having trouble sleeping

Effect of vibration and storage on some physico-chemical properties of a commercial red wine
http://foodchem.net/publication/files/200808.pdf

Thanks for all the tips and advices!

Best,

Do you really think the smell of the wine fridge could taint the wine ?
Cheers