How to Find the Right Bottle Capacity in a Wine Refrigerator

One of the most important factors to consider when looking for a wine refrigerator is bottle capacity. It’s what most people shop by and it’s typically included in each unit’s title.

Contrary to popular belief and to the dismay of many new wine cooler owners, the supplier-stated capacity doesn’t apply to every collection. There are many confounding variables that can affect your bottle capacity, sometimes making it much smaller than you thought. It’s important to know what these are, because whether it’s an array of wine types or only your favorite varietal, you want your collection to fit.

So, here are the factors you should consider in order to find the right bottle capacity in a wine refrigerator:

Consider Your Bottle Types

When looking at bottle capacities, most people don’t take into account the variety of bottle sizes available. Depending on the type of wine, the shape of your bottles could be completely different. Cabernet Sauvignon bottles have high shoulders, while Chardonnay and Pinot Noir bottles have low, sloping shoulders and a wider base. The bottle capacity of most wine refrigerators, unless stated otherwise, is determined using Bordeaux-style 750 mL wine bottles.

However, it’s been our experience that Bordeaux, Rhine, Mosel, and Alsace style bottles fit with no issues. Alternatively, Rhone, Burgundy, and Champagne style bottles tend to present capacity issues.

As a general rule, if your collection is comprised of larger-style bottles, you’ll want to purchase a wine fridge with a larger capacity than the quantity you’re looking to store.

Consider the Shelving Materials

Different shelving materials cause a difference in the space between shelves. Generally speaking, straight shelves made of wood create a much tighter space constraint than shelves made of scalloped wire. Scalloped wire shelves have a dip in them, giving you more space to work with vertically. The width of the dip is often a little small for larger-style wine bottles, so the fit for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay won’t be perfect horizontally speaking, but you won’t have the struggle of not being able to pull out shelves cleanly due to tight vertical fit.

The trick to accommodating large bottles in any wine fridge is to make sure the shelves are removable and anticipate having to remove at least one shelf. This, of course, will lower the stated capacity, but it will easily accommodate bottles of all sizes.

Consider the Bottle Configuration

You’ll also want to keep in mind both your preferred and the suggested configuration style of your bottles. If you only want to load your wine a certain direction, you’ll want to be sure that is the loading style suggested by the unit’s owner’s manual.

If the manual suggests you load the bottles end-to-end and you only load them one direction, the possible capacity will be smaller than stated. Although there are reasons to load them all bottom-forward due to the ease of label reading or all neck-forward due to the ease of removal, the best way to ensure a full capacity is to load them both ways, alternating the direction of each bottle.

Consider the Zone Capacities

Dual zone wine refrigerators are fantastic for multi-varietal collections. You can keep both your reds and whites at their optimal serving temperatures. If your collection is heavier in one varietal though, you’ll want to pay attention to both the temperature range and bottle capacity of each temperature zone.

Sometimes each zone has the same capacity and same temperature zone, but other times the zones are intended for either white wines or red wines. If the latter is the case, then the temperature ranges will be slightly skewed to warmer or colder depending on which varietal is meant to be stored in that zone. If you drink mostly reds, look for a dual zone unit featuring warmer temperatures in its larger capacity zone and visa-versus.

Remember: Bigger is Better

When shopping for the perfect wine refrigerator, it’s important to remember that going bigger is always better. It’s more advantageous to have more than enough storage space rather than not enough room for the bottles that you already own. At the very least, having a larger-than-needed wine fridge will give you the motivation to grow your collection and your love of wine.

Capacity Options:

• 6-25 Bottle Capacity
• 26-37 Bottle Capacity
• 38-66 Bottle Capacity
• 66-150+ Bottle Capacity