For the true connoisseur of wines, there is nothing worse than going over a friend’s house for dinner and watching them pull out a fresh bottle of pinot noir from the house refrigerator. The real wine lover knows that this wine might have developed an interest in obtaining the flavor of last week’s leftovers. Nothing ruins a good get-together better than of fishy glass of red.
If you don’t own a nice cellar for your wine, then the next best option is looking into wine fridges.

Whether you call it a wine fridge, wine cooler, or wine cave, some people stay away from buying these great items because they fear the price of them, but that shouldn’t be a concern. You can find simple six-bottle wine fridges for below a hundred dollars.

Storing your wine in a conventional refrigerator can affect the flavor and body of your wine. A regular fridge is designed to suppress humidity, while a wine cooler is designed to sustain it. This lack of humidity will shrink a cork and make it porous which allows strong odors to build up in the wine.

Another reason why the house refrigerator is no good for holding wine is the vibrations caused by the compressor. These vibrations can adversely affect your wine’s maturation process. While thermoelectric wine fridges do not suffer from this problem, there are non-thermo-electric models that do run on compressors but have built-in vibration absorbers that help let the wine mature naturally.

When looking at wine fridges, there are a few things to consider. If you are a regular wine drinker, then a standard small unit sitting on your counter will be perfect. But if you are trying to start a little collection to keep for years, then you might want to look into a more elaborate unit to help preserve the life of the cork.

Other important factors to consider are bottle count, wire or wooden shelves (preferably shelves that roll out smoothly), plastic or aluminum linings, and door design as there is a difference between solid and glass doors.

While glass doors look better, they are typically more expensive and don’t insulate as well as a solid door. If you do decide on a glass door, make sure it has UV protection as sunlight can damage the wine.

The final difficult step after choosing between wine fridges is deciding which bottle of wine will go in first

Wine Fridges or Wine Cabinets
Many novice wine collectors make the mistake of thinking wine fridges and wine cabinets are the same thing. They go out and buy a nice top-of-the- line thermoelectric wine fridge with a beautiful glass door and an alarm system only to find out that it is not exactly what they were looking for.

Wine fridges, and also wine coolers, are intended for you to store your wine at the proper temperature and humidity for consumption. While on the other hand, wine cabinets are designed to store wine for a much longer time until that day you move to Napa Valley and own your own wine cellar.

If you drink a glass or two of wine with dinner, then a small 6-bottle wine fridge is perfect for you. For those that host parties and consume higher amounts of wine on a monthly basis, then there are larger wine fridges that hold up over a month’s supply of wine.

The main point of wine fridges is not that you just have bottles of wine on hand for consumption, but that this wine is protected from problems like humidity, vibrations, and early maturation that can happen in a house refrigerator.

Now, a wine cabinet is more for serious collectors that want to preserve the age of their wines. These large appliances are best for keeping wines at their perfect temperature and humidity, preserving the vintage and keeping the cork moist. Cork integrity is very important as too much humidity can dry a cork out, making it porous and susceptible to odors.

For those that are collecting different wines by their color, then you want to purchase a wine cabinet that has various temperature controls. Not all wines can be kept at the same temperatures as full-bodied reds should be chilled between 55 and 59 degrees, while whites and roses need to be kept a little cooler.

Wine cabinets are usually made of wood with an air-conditioning unit and blend well with the furniture, while wine fridges are more metallic looking. Both types of wine storage can be very expensive, but you can get 6-bottle fridges for less than 100 dollars whereas a wine cabinet can cost several thousands of dollars.

When deciding between the two, it really comes down to how much you have to spend, how much room you have, and how often you pop a cork on a fresh bottle.