A Built-In Refrigerated Wine Cabinet: A Good or Bad Idea?

Can you really trust a built-in refrigerated wine cabinet to store your most precious bottles? Where and how should this kind of wine cooling solution be fitted? Read on for Architecture Intérieure du Vin’s thoughts on the matter and the benefits of these built-in wine coolers that are compatible with our top-of-the-range wine storage furniture.

Can you Store Bottles in a Built-In Refrigerated Wine Cabinet?

Professional brands and models of built-in refrigerated wine cabinets ensure that your finest wines are kept at the right temperature, protecting them from any fluctuations or external threats. Let’s take a closer look at the features and benefits of this kind of wine storage furniture.

What is a Built-In Refrigerated Wine Cabinet?

A built-in wine cooler cabinet is a specially designed refrigerator that maintains white, rosé, red or sparkling wines at the right temperature, with optimal humidity levels and an anti-vibration system. Bottles are generally stored horizontally on shelves with individual compartments or on grouped shelves but can also be positioned vertically.

As the name suggests, a built-in wine cooler can be fitted in a furniture unit, column, cupboard, beneath a worktop, between two walls, or in any other private or business setting. A single refrigerated unit can be set to several temperatures so that you can store different types of wine in separate compartments.

In terms of storage, a built-in refrigerated wine cabinet is most often used to keep bottles at the right temperature for tasting in the coming days, weeks or months. It is therefore best suited for preparing bottles to be served, although some models are also designed for aging vin de garde bottles.

What are the Benefits of a Built-In Refrigerated Wine Cabinet?

Purists will argue that wine should be stored in traditional storage areas at room temperature, but a built-in refrigerated cabinet tackles a lot of the issues and preconceived ideas surrounding wine preservation. Indeed, a top-of-the-range built-in wine refrigerator meets all 5 main storage requirements:

• An ideal temperature, which can be adjusted depending on the vintage, grape variety or terroir,
• optimal humidity,
• light ventilation and preservation of air quality,
• stability, maintained by an anti-vibration system,
• low light.

With this in mind, you can fit a built-in wine cabinet anywhere you like, as long as it can be plugged in, which is one of the major benefits of this kind of wine cooling solution. We recommend My Wine Cabinet, our specialised partner, to find the right mechanism and model for you.

Fitting a Built-In Wine Cooling Cabinet

A built-in wine cooling cabinet is a great wine storage solution, particularly when preparing a few select bottles to be served and sampled shortly after. Let’s now take a look at where to fit these cabinets and how to combine a built-in wine refrigerator with our Architecture Intérieure du Vin furniture. We recommend calling on one of our experts to fit it.

Where Should you Fit a Built-In Wine Cooler?

The air-tight structure of a built-in refrigerated wine cabinet maintains perfect storage conditions, meaning that it can be fitted absolutely anywhere, depending on your preferences and existing or future wine space. For example, you could incorporate it into your living space and even in a bright room or corridor in your house or flat. You could also fit it in your kitchen, under a worktop, in a dining room cupboard, in your living room, bedroom or library… Your wine doesn’t have to be stored in the depths of your basement!

A built-in wine cooling cabinet is also ideal for professionals and could be fitted behind a wine bar counter, next to or inside a restaurant’s kitchen, in a wine shop, winery tasting room, or any other business space. It makes serving easier and adds a certain cachet to the room.

Can you Fit a Refrigerated Wine Cabinet into Architecture Intérieure du Vin Units?

Built-in wine cooling cabinets are not only compatible with our Architecture Intérieure du Vin storage furniture, but they are also perfectly complementary. Indeed, a top-of-the-range wine cooler can be fitted in any wine cellar or space kitted out with our steel and solid wood cabinets and shelves and built into one of our units. A standard refrigerator up to 68 cm wide can be fitted onto our 70 cm shelves without any height or depth constraints.

Architecture Intérieure du Vin’s wine storage furniture thus ensures the slow maturation and long preservation of vin de garde bottles over several years and boasts a number of technical options to beautifully display and showcase them. Meanwhile the built-in wine cooling cabinet maintains a few select bottles at the right temperature for tasting, ready to be served a few hours, days, weeks or months later.