Thinking about buying a used 700 bottle cabinet, and will need to replace the cooling unit.
Would love to get some input on recommendations.
The two units I see typically in these cabinets are Wine Mate, and Breezaire.
If anyone has any experience with these, please let me know how long these typcially last, any brand I should avoid, how well do they evenly distribute temperature in a cabinet like this, etc.
I recently bought a 500 bottle older le cache cabinet with dead breezaire and have a cellarpro 1800XT to drop in. Everything I have read was breezaire is junk.
CellarPro 1800XT units are sized to replace Breezaire 2200 and Wine-Mate 2500 cooling units. Thats the route I’m going and suggest you consider.
The cellarpro 1800xt that was already in the le cache that I bought used 5+ years ago is still humming along just fine and is sited in a hot Southern California garage. That’s a tough test and it’s doing great.
CellarPro has the best customer service. Once a unit failed and they shipped me a replacement the next day. Their warranty coverage (5 years) is the best. I have 2 units and beside this adventure 7+ years ago. Everything has been working great since. Highly recommended.
Definitely looks like CellarPro will be the way to go if I decide to go through with this.
Slightly off topic - If anyone has thoughts on whether or not they think this would be a good deal, let me know:
$1000 for a used Vinotemp glass door wine cabinet, allegedly holding 700 bottles. From pictures, looks like it is in very good shape.
Would be around $1400-$1500 for a CellarPro unit.
Will cost around $300 to have this thing moved 70 miles across town.
That’s basically identical to what I have. It looks like that one has a stripe of 2 rows of the larger bins which will hold the larger Burgundy, some Champagne (most “regular size” lower end stuff and Cristal, but not DP, Dom Ruinart, Salon, etc) and even Magnums of Riesling. Mine has that larger size bins everywhere, which is extremely useful, but does take up a lot of space, so it fits fewer bottles. Keep in mind the smaller bins that comprise most of that unit will not fit Burgundy bottles. I have that size bins on my other unit and they are only good for Bordeaux size bottles, which is why I got this unit later.
Counting the bins on that photo, it looks like closer to ~550 bottles max, not 700.
FYI, I paid $1000 for my unit with a working cooler. IMO, $1k with a non-working cooler is definitely overpriced.