Views on Wine Refrigerators

[Thinman]

We just returned from Sonoma with a few cases of wine. This is much more than we typically keep. My basement, while dark and mildly humid, typically fluctuates too much in temp to store wine on racks long term. Are there any major cons against using a large wine refrigerator? Vibration is the only thing I can think of. If the answer is no, brand suggestions as well as other thoughts are appreciated. Thanks!

[hotwine]

Welcome to the board, Thinman. If you'll scroll down to Cellars/Storage/Racking near the bottom of the board, you'll find a lot of discussions on that subject over the last several years. Many members here have "wine "fridges", some have cellars (both chilled and not). And some of us have adapted space that was initially unsuitable to fairly decent storage; so I commend those discussions to you as a way to get up to speed on the issues involved, potential costs, pitfalls, etc.

Since you have a cellar, you might be able to add the necessary modifications at a per-bottle cost that is less than would be the case if you were to buy a free-standing wine fridge. Please take a look at those discussions. Suggest you do a search in that thread on my username going back at least to 2002 to see how I finally solved the problem. Then come back and we'll share ideas.