Cost effective, serviceable first cellar
Written: Nov 28 '00 (Updated May 15 '01)
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Pros: Great value, high capacity
Cons: Not the most powerful cooling.
The Bottom Line: This cellar is an excellent value for someone starting out in wine.
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| wnissen's Full Review: Vintage Keeper 200 |
I bought this cellar because my collection was growing too large to keep in the 16 bottle holder I built and kept in a sealed cardboard box. Before you laugh, please realize that it is nearly impossible to have good wine storage as a poor college student. After I graduated and moved into an apartment, I decided that the place I had been using under the floor was not good enough. However, I could not afford a Eurocave or similar model, especially when you factor in US$300 just for shipping.
Thus, I choose the Vintage Keeper, which I ordered through the Wine Enthusiast catalog. It is rather like the furniture that is available from IKEA, where you put it together yourself and save a lot on assembly and transportation costs. I paid US$1100 after shipping, and it arrived in something like seven boxes brought to my door in a very large truck. The delivery person did not assist me in moving the boxes into the living room, as it was only his job to get them to the entryway.
I was then faced with the rather daunting task of putting this refrigerator sized unit together. Most of the pieces fit together sensically, despite the fact that the instructions are inexplicably split into two sections. Once I had assembled the main box, the only tricky part was using the provided caulk to seal the joints. I waited to install the cooling unit until I had put the cellar in its final location, as the cooling unit (by Koolspace) is *very* heavy. Just because it is not as powerful as a window air conditioner does not mean it is not as heavy.
I loaded up my wine, and ran into a few snags. These are not unique to this cellar, and happen to all cellars with fixed racks. The main problem is that the base of sparkling wine bottles are too small to fit in the black metal racks. Thus they have to go in the section on top of the racks. There's only room for maybe a case of sparkling wine up top, and that is if you have nothing else to keep there.
The cellar is double-deep, meaning that there are two layers of 100 bottles each. Unless you don't mind it being hidden, you must have either two bottles of the same kind in each slot or one bottle with nothing behind it. I've taken to solving this problem by buying bottles at least two at a time, but you may not find this solution economical. :)
The double layers also cause problems when bottles are two tall. Unusual Bordeaux and Burgundy style bottles do not fit front to back, and most tall German-style bottles will not either. For some reason, a lot of Zinfandel seems to come in taller and taller bottles, and these don't fit front-to-back either. This causes a pretty big reduction of the stated capacity. Most bottles will fit two to a slot, but a few like Bogle Chardonnay, Chouinard and Fife Zinfandel, and a number of Rhone blends do not.
As for the actual performance of the cellar from a temperature standpoint, I'm mostly satisfied. I don't have good air-conditioning in the room that I keep the cellar in, so sometimes the ambient temperature at the top of the cellar can get as bad as 95 degrees F. The cellar is only rated at +20F ambient temperature, and it clearly does not do as well at those high temperatures. However, it's always good for at least 20F difference from the ambient, which can only help. Update 15 May 2001: I re-discovered the owner's manual, and found that there is a "turbo" setting on the cooling unit. The fan blows a lot harder, which generates more noise but also helps the cooling. Recently the ambient temperature reached 85 degrees but inside the cellar it was a nearly-perfect 59 degrees! This also has something to do with the increased mass of water in the cellar. For the past couple months I have been saving all the bottles I drink, refilling them with water, and recorking them. This gives a much greater thermal mass that smooths out daytime temperature variations.
Despite these steps I would still highly recommend finding a place in your home (an inside room) with fairly stable temperature to begin with, as this keeps the cellar from working too hard. There is no heating unit, so you will have to make sure that the ambient temperature in the room does not drop below your chosen cellar temperature. I get around this by placing the cellar in a room with several computers that generate more than enough heat even on chilly days.
The cooling unit is quite quiet, getting loud only when the weather is at its hottest. The computers in the room make enough noise that the cellar is barely noticed, although in a quiet room it could be distracting.
In terms of visual obtrusiveness it is about as unobtrusive as a 2x2x6 foot black box can be (I don't have a glass door on mine). I wouldn't recommend it for someone's living room, but it's fine for a back room. I'm going to decorate mine with a bulletin board made from wine corks, which should soften its otherwise monolithic appearance.
I've only had it since June 2000, so I can't comment on its long-term reliability, but I worked it pretty hard this summer and it is still going strong. The construction seems solid and well-attached, although the provided lock is a little tough to turn.
If you can't afford a Eurocave and have a little free time (I had just graduated from college), I heartily recommend this cellar for storing your budding fine wine collection. There's nothing like the feeling of being able to make dinner and just "pull something from the cellar" that has a little age on it. Sure, it's probably not the best choice to keep your Grand Cru bottlings for the next 30 years, but if you can afford that kind of wine you won't try to save several hundred dollars by buying this cellar.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1100
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Epinions.com ID:
wnissen
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Member: Walt
Location: Livermore, CA
Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 0 members
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