Wine Cooler

[Nino_S]

Hello All,

New to the forum and relatively new in the hobby of collecting wines.

I recently got a fairly cheap (around EUR/USD 250) wine cooler unit (21 bottles capacity) in order to store some reds & whites (EUR/USD 30-70 each bottle).

Unit is supposed to operate between 7-18c and started operating on 18/AUG. Manufacturer advises in the operation manual that there may be a 4-6 celsius degrees fluctuation (-15.5 - -14.5 Farrenheit) from bottom to top shelf which is quite understandable and to resolve this I obviously put whites at the bottom and reds at the top

So here comes the problem.

Having set the thermostat of the unit at 9 Celsius degrees (-12.8 F), I am getting 8 Celsius (-13.3 F) at the bottom unit and 19 Celsius (-7.2 F) at the bottom.

On my mind this is a huge fluctuation and as I intend to keep some of the wines as much as possible (around 10 years) I am thinking of returning the unit as faulty.

Your thoughts please.

Is above normal ? Should I return the unit ? What would be the minimum budget for a compact wine fridge in order to have my wines kept in there for years ?

Thank you All!


Nino

 

[sour_grapes]

Hi Nino, Welcome to Winemaking Talk!

Your English is excellent. However, a "fluctuation" would be something that changed in time, and that would be a problem for your wine. If the temperatures are steady, then it won't hurt the wine. But I agree there seems to be a problem with your fridge.

To me, 8ºC is fine for a white. 19ºC seems a bit high for the red, but not outrageously so. But again, it seems odd that there is such a big range. I would certainly consider returning it.

Finally, it is gracious of you to think to convert your temperatures to ºF for us, since much of this forum is based in a land that weirdly did not adopt the metric system. However, your conversions are very wrong. A few correct values are:
8C -> 46F
9C -> 48F
19C -> 66F

and when you talk about a 4-6ºC difference, you don't convert that range to the temps corresponding to 4C and 6C. Rather, each ºC "counts" for 1.8ºF, so an expected difference of 4 to 6ºC is the same as an expected difference of 7.2 to 10.8ºF (or basically 7 to 11ºF).

 

[Nino_S]

Hi Nino, Welcome to Winemaking Talk!

Your English is excellent. However, a "fluctuation" would be something that changed in time, and that would be a problem for your wine. If the temperatures are steady, then it won't hurt the wine. But I agree there seems to be a problem with your fridge.

To me, 8ºC is fine for a white. 19ºC seems a bit high for the red, but not outrageously so. But again, it seems odd that there is such a big range. I would certainly consider returning it.

Hi Sour_Grapes,

First of all thank you for your time to reply and indeed my conversions to Farrenheit were off.

I agree that 19 degrees Celsius are not extremely high for the reds but the temperature difference between the shelves is a big concern and not a hopeful sign that the cooler will last.

So I am strongly thinking to return this and buy something more expensive around the area of EUR/USD 500-600 hoping to get a bit more reliability from a more well known brand.

I’ve done some research and found that Climadiff and La Somelliere which are both French brands are considered some of the best. Would you able to share your knowledge on this as well ?

 

[sour_grapes]

I am sorry, but I have essentially no knowledge of brands of wine coolers. Maybe someone else can chime in?

 

[Jim Welch]

That is a large temp difference in a small cooler. If you don’t return or exchange it you could rig up a small computer fan to circulate interior air constantly which should practically eliminate that stratification that is happening. One should NOT have to do something like that on a new cooler IMO but thought I’d put it out there to consider.

 

[Jim Welch]

After thinking more on this issue, how long has this been operating with wine bottles in it? Also, are you measuring liquid temperature or air temperature in the cooler?
If it has just been loaded this could be from it running constantly to cool and it may (or may not!) come into a better equilibrium.
If you are measuring air temps you need to check liquid temps too.

 

[spg1954]

You might also want to check the seals on the door. If it is leaking air, the compressor or cooling unit will be running all the time, giving you much cooler air near the lower area and the upper will have the warmer, leaking air. And do give it time to find equilibrium from opening the door and putting in new bottles, which can take quite awhile to reach the ambient temps you select.