How to Buy the Best Wine Credenza

For serious wine collectors, the question of wine storage quickly becomes one of the primary issues you face, particularly as your wine collection grows and grows. You’ve got a number of options for places to store your wine — wine racks, wine cabinets, wine coolers, and wine cellars for the especially ambitious, just to name a few.

One option that some wine collectors might not be as familiar with is wine credenzas.

What is a Wine Credenza?

A wine credenza is a piece of furniture that combines the beauty of a wine cabinet with the functionality of a wine cooler. Wine credenzas essentially look like a cabinet, but space inside that’s temperature controlled and designed specifically to hold wine bottles. In some cases, wine credenzas are also designed to include spaces for keeping your wine glasses and other wine accessories, along with a number of bottles.

Wine credenzas are typically made of wood and designed to blend in with the other furniture you have in your home. They’re a good visual addition to spaces like a dining room or living area and they allow you to store all the bottles of wine you plan to drink in the near future at the optimum temperature for consumption so they’re ready for you when you’re ready for them.

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Factors to Consider When Choosing a Wine Credenza

If a wine credenza is sounding like just what you need, there are a few factors you should keep in mind during your search in order to make sure you choose the best one for your needs.

Style

One of the big appeals of choosing a wine credenza over other types of wine storage is that they’re beautiful. They’re designed to visually add something to the space in a way that complements the other types of furniture typical in most homes. They look good alongside furniture like wooden cabinets, dressers, and bookcases.

Wine credenzas are typically made of wood, or at least have the appearance of it. They come in different color finishes and a variety of configurations. Many include glass doors so they can show off your bottles of wine.

Any consumer that chooses to purchase a wine credenza in lieu of a wine cooler that looks like a fridge is already showing a preference for style. All wine credenzas are designed to be beautiful, but beauty is subjective. If appearance is an important priority for you in your search, your best bet is to spend some time browsing to see how you respond to the different photos of available wine credenzas. You’ll know right away what you like the look of, and which items don’t work for you.

Size

Wine credenzas vary in size. Some are fairly compact and capable of fitting snugly into limited space, while others are especially large and will require some serious floor real estate in the room you choose to keep it in.

Before you even start seriously browsing, have a spot in mind in your home for where your wine credenza will go. Measure the space so you know your limitations and can keep your search within the realm of what’s possible for the space available. If you get a wine credenza that’s too big to fit in the room you planned to put it in, you may be able to salvage the situation with some re-organizing, but you’ll no doubt be happier with your purchase if you don’t have to deal with that.

A wine credenza that fits easily and doesn’t add the appearance of clutter in an already overfull space is obviously ideal.

Capacity

For the functional portion of your purchase, your top concern should be capacity. A wine credenza is primarily meant for storing wine, so you should make sure you buy a piece that can hold as much wine as you need it to.

For some buyers, the wine credenza will be a supplementary wine storage solution for the wines they plan on drinking soon, in which case a large capacity may not be important. For customers who plan to use their wine credenza as the only wine storage option they use, then making sure you get one that fits as many bottles as you usually have at one time is important.

Size and capacity are naturally related, but there’s not a direct correlation between the two. Some wine credenzas are designed specifically to store wine and that’s it, which means the number of wine bottles they can fit relative to their size is high. Others include spaces that are devoted to stemware or other wine accessories, which leaves the amount available for wine bottles comparatively limited.

All wine credenzas will list the number of bottles they can typically fit in their product descriptions. Smaller-capacity wine credenzas fit around 14-18 bottles, while especially high-capacity models can go up to 300 bottles. As you’d expect, some of the most popular models fall in the middle of that range, storing 28 or 36 bottles.

Wine Bottle Type

In general, the capacity listed for wine credenzas (and other types of wine storage) is for the standard Bordeaux style of bottle. If you’ll be storing bottles that come in the size and shape typical for Pinot Noir, large California reds, or sparkling wines, then you probably won’t be able to fit as many bottles total.

You can find wine credenzas that allow for some flexibility in the size of bottles you store, while others have slots that are fixed. If you know you’ll be buying bottles of wine that are larger than standard, then check to make sure that any wine credenza you consider with fixed slots will fit the type of bottles you plan on storing.

Cost

Wine credenzas manage to be a nice looking piece of furniture, a functional wine storage solution, and a working wine cooler. That’s a lot to pack into one item, so it makes sense that wine credenzas rarely come cheap. Prices start at around $1,000 for small, low-capacity models and go up to nearly $5,000 for especially stylish and high-capacity pieces.

If those prices sound high, consider that buying a wine credenza can eliminate the need to buy a wine cooler, which can cost up to $1,000. In addition, if you’re collecting high-value wines, then making sure you keep them in the right condition as you store them is how you protect your costly investment. If you’re not skimping on the wine, you shouldn’t skimp on your wine storage either.

A wine credenza is an investment likely to last a long time and provide an important function for you and your wines. In that light, the cost of a good wine credenza is well worth it.

Number of Doors

Wine credenzas can have anywhere from one to six doors. Credenzas that come with two or three doors are the most common. For the most part, the decision of how many doors to go with will be a matter of what you like the look of. The main practical benefit that comes from having more doors is that when you’re opening one door to choose the next wine to pull out, the open door won’t affect the temperature of the other sections of the wine credenza as much.

Temperature

The best temperature for wine storage is widely considered to be right around 55°, but most people prefer to drink their white wines chilled, somewhere in the range of 45° to 50°. Some wine credenzas offer a temperature range wide enough to accommodate both, but some are designed specifically for storage and don’t go lower than 53°.

If you’ll mostly be storing red wines in your credenza, or if you see no issue with moving your whites to the fridge for a while before you drink them, then a temperature range that skews high won’t be a problem. If you want to be able to pull white wines out of the credenza perfectly chilled and ready to drink, then you should look for a wine credenza with a wider temperature range.

Number of Zones

Dual-zone wine credenzas include two sections that you can set different temperatures for, so you can keep both whites and reds ready for consumption. You’ll pay a little more for the privilege, but the convenience that dual-zone options afford can be well worth it for people who regularly drink both red and white.
Noise

As with any wine refrigerator, wine credenzas make some noise. If you’re concerned about adding one more noisy appliance to your home, then consider sticking with a thermoelectric wine credenza. These won’t maintain cold temperatures as well as other credenzas, but they should be able to reliably keep the 55° that’s best for storage and they won’t make much noise.

Features to consider:

• Drawer:

  Some wine credenzas include a drawer that you can store wine accessories in for convenient access.

• Pull-out serving tray:

  A pull-out serving tray adds some convenience when you’re opening and pouring a bottle.

• Interior light:

  Wine credenzas that include an interior light will make it easier for you to see the wines as you’re making your selection.

• Removable shelves:

  Removable shelves provide some extra flexibility in the types of bottles you’re able to fit.

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Popular Wine Credenza Brands

To ensure you choose a wine credenza that’s built to last, you should consider brand reputation in your search. There aren’t too many brands in the wine credenza space at this time, so we looked at the customer reviews for wine credenzas sold by each of the main two brands working in the space to see what actual customers have to say about them. Here’s a summary of what we found.

Vinotemp

Vinotemp offers a range of wine credenzas in different styles that earn consistently positive reviews from customers. Reviewers say the credenzas are solidly built, work quietly and are great for fitting everything they need in order to serve wine to guests. One model got praise for providing dual zones so that both whites and reds stay at just the right temperature. A couple of reviewers cautioned that their wine credenza was big, so buyers should make sure to measure the space they have in mind to make sure it can accommodate. The reputation of Vinotemp’s wine credenzas is positive across the board.

Wine Enthusiast

Wine Enthusiast sells a number of wine credenzas in different configurations. Most reviewers are pleased with their wine credenzas, praising them for being well-built, beautiful, and offering lots of storage space. A couple of reviews point to issues with the quality of the wine cooler that’s a part of the credenza. Specifically, some customers had issues with it not keeping temperature or needing to replace parts soon after purchase. Most customers are happy, but beware that there could be issues with the wine cooler if you opt for a wine credenza from Wine Enthusiast.

Conclusion

Wine lovers know that wine storage is serious business, but that doesn’t have to mean it can’t also be stylish. Wine credenzas are a beautiful addition to any room and provide the functionality you need to keep your wines at just the right temperature to taste great when the time comes to open them. If your wine collection just keeps growing and you’re ready to take the next step to ensure proper storage, the right wine credenza could be just what you need.