Mini wine cellars - A skeptical view
Those fancy "mini" wine cellar units that hold 12 to 16 bottles are a hot item for the holidays. I spotted a giant stack of them on a sale display, surmounted by a giant cutout image of Food Network personality Rachael Ray, going for a cut-rate $99 just the other day.
Sounds like a deal? Frankly, I'm not inclined to buy, or to recommend that you give them serious consideration unless you simply have money to burn.
The unit on sale over the weekend at Target stores - a 16-bottle Vinotemp cellar model VT-16TEDS - looks like a real bargain at a Black Friday weekend sale price of $99, with similar models selling online for $200 or more, I'm skeptical.
Made in China, it's a spiffy looking unit, shiny stainless steel with a blue-tinted thermopane glass door and three shelves inside. As with so many of these smaller cellar units, though, the restrictions of size (It's cubical, a little over 1 1/2 feet per side) clearly limit its insulating power. The small print notes that it's not to be operated at temperatures over 77F, meaning that if you're thinking about using it to keep a few treasured bottles cool all summer, you'll still need to keep your home air conditioning cranked way down so the wine cellar will hold a wine-safe 55 to 60F.
More to the point, though, these little units simply don't hold enough wine to be of much use to anyone. A single case fills it up, making it all but useless for anyone serious enough about wine to have more than a dozen bottles lined up for long-term cellaring.
If you're feeling so flush that you can toss away a hundred bucks (or, off sale, double that amount) on a near-whim, then a unit like this might make a pretty accessory at your wet bar (but don't plan to build it in - the small print warns against that, too). It also might serve as a short-term staging area for a well-heeled wine geek who wants to keep a few bottles cooled and handy without having to go down to the cellar.
But for most of us, my advice remains as in our frequently asked question about wine cellaring: If you want to get very serious about keeping older wines, wait until you can justify a large, free-standing cellar unit or built-in cellar capable of housing several hundred bottles. As a hard-core wine geek, you'll need that space.
Alternatively, if you drink up most of your wine within a year or less of purchase and don't really plan to keep "cult" wines or collectibles for many years, then you don't need a temperature-controlled cellar at all. A wine rack in a cool, quiet, dark room under air conditioning will do just fine - or even keep a few bottles cold in the fridge until you need them.
If you'd like more information on this topic or would like to add a comment or question of your own, I posed a question about mini-cellar units on our WineLovers Discussion Group over the weekend, and it has already inspired a good conversation. Feel free to post a comment here or to join in that thread.
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