Quote:
Originally Posted by hawkeyethearcher
any wine drinkers here
i was thinking of buying a wine cooler. anyone own one and what do you think of them
also looking into wine chillers
wine of the month club. was thinking of joining this as well but there are a ton of wine places in san diego so i may just hit those at first.
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Wow! So huge a range of questions! You can have me pontificating all day long!
Not sure if you remember, but I am a Sommelier. And I currently run my own company that specializes in brokering of fine wine & spirits as well as doing consulting for private/commercial clients when it comes to cellar construction, storage and management. Hence my Forum ID:
VIN REAPER
First off! Wine Chillers! Hokum! Just plan ahead! I have always found them to be great wastes of space. If you need to rapidly chill a bottle, ice and a lot of water. And add a few table spoons of salt. Your wine will be chilled in no time!
Second as for wine fridges/cave/etc...I have a few different ones that I like to recommend. Depending on your space requirements and overall usage, long or short term storage and aesthetic requirements. You also must take into account shelving and bottle capacity for the type of bottles you will be mostly buying. Remember champagne bottles take up much more room then a Bordeaux shaped bottle. Also location of placement is a factor. It should be a unit that has vibration absorbers on it for its own compressor, hence you want to NOT situate it in an area that will have other equipment that cause vibration or an area that is prone to it for any other reason. Other factors to consider are humidity and light. Once again these depend more or less depending on your drinking/collecting needs.
The companies overall that I have found to provide good quality stand alone units are
Eurocave and
Vinotemp.
Subzero makes good quality units too, but target the needs of the casual drink not the collector sue to their sizes and aesthetic offerings.
Now for the wine of the month club! I think they are good, but you should get to know the store that is offering it as a product first. Some stores utilize the "wine of the month club" to get rid of whatever they have left in stick they need to clear out. And that comes from being in wine retail for the last 20+ years! Your best bet is to find a store or two that have great selections, especially of value wines. That's how you will know that there is a person(s) there that care about wine at all price ranges. It is easy to find a shop where everyone knows all the Grail Wines, the truly wine educated retailer will know a ton of great values. (Just like in statue collecting, everyone comes into the game wanting and knowing the grails, but its through time and exposure that one becomes more experienced and realizes that there are tons of other pieces that don't get the recognition they should.) After building a rapport with these true retailers and have them help you educate your palate. Then and only then should you trust a wine of the month club from them. My guess is that you will have enough wine by then that you won't even need to bother with it!
And remember a wine cellar is, as I call it, my "Tool Box". I go to it to pull out a tool for a specific job. Of course tools can be multi-taskers, but the important thing is to learn what tasks each tool is suited for!
Enjoy your journey in the area which has been, is and always will be my first passion!
And feel free to ask me any questions you may have!
Oh! And I haven't even begun to talk about building your own temperature controlled wine cellar! But that's an entirely different story! And you must know more about wine if you ever get to that stage of the even greater collecting SICKNESS!!! LOL!
VR