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I suspect that the functional ones will be with us indefinitely, as they are a cost effective and convenient way of storing largeish quantities of bottles for many. The ‘furniture’ ones…who knows?
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Two questions for people…
The Liebherr and Climadiff have those large storage shelves. How difficult or not is it to dig the bottle you want out?! The Eurocave have those nice sliding shelves where single bottles lay down, they look lovely and easy and are twice the price…
Second q… anyone have any experience with Caple units??
I have both a Climadiff and a Transtherm cabinet. In both cases it always seems to me that the bottle I want is on the back stack and is at the bottom so I have to move multiple bottles to get to it. However it doesn’t take long and the lovely sliding shelves don’t really solve the problem - the only real solution is to have the bottles stacked in such as way that the ones you want are at the front and at the top. But however I arrange them I always decide on a bottle that is in the least accessible place…
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I have a Liebherr, which has performed faultlessly for over 14 years, and in my opinion, unless you are very strict and organised, it is the bottle shapes as well as the multi-layered shelves that prevent easy extraction. Rhone style vs Bordeaux vs Champagne plus some Riesling bottles all add up to a 3D jigsaw of wine, especially as there can be a front and back row interlocked!
In practice, it’s fairly straightforward to get at the bottle you want, but you will have to remove 2 or 3 others first, all assuming you’re very good at keeping a record of what’s on each shelf.
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Couldn’t agree more.
Also you can get more bottles in if you stack them on shelves. Digging out bottles can be a pain, but I’d rather do that and have more storage space.
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Have a Liebherr. If the shelves are packed to the optimum you cannot identify a
single bottle when you open the door so @VinoVeritas hits the nail on the head - you need accurate records of what is on each shelf. Even then, if unlucky you could be pulling out 20+ bottles to find the one you are looking for.
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I don’t have a detailed list of what’s where. But it is all classified as:
Shelf 1 - Red
Shelf 2 - White
Shelf 3 - Fizz
Shelf 4 - Whatever you do don’t take one of these once you’ve had a drink!!
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Apropos of little relevance, but it was positive comments about Liebherr wine storage cabinets on another forum that convinced us to pay for an expensive Liebherr fridge freezer.
IN all the years we’ve had fridge freezers we have never had one with so many problems. They worked well until one day when they died. But we’ve had the Liebherr engineer out twice to it and now, frustrated with it, we are getting it replaced.
The freezer has to do only one thing, and that is to keep its contents frozen, something the Liebherr doesn’t understand. Ordered online today, its replacement will be the cheapest fridge freezer on the John Lewis’s list.
PS - I’ve got an ancient EuroCave, bought in the days when they only served the catering trade.
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I beg to differ. You can peek at some labels at the front of the fridge if the bottles are label-up, and see the top of capsules of bottles at the back. Combined with a knowledge of which wines are on each shelf, it is sometimes possible to locate the bottle you want without digging down to it. Not always of course, but I’d say around 50% of the time
To be fair I can see a Gigondas at one end and a Pinot Noir at t’other but no capsules even when I get down to their level.
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Hmmm… What are we doing differently I wonder? This was taken with flash, but I can see the capsule tops in normal light
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Yours looks much better. I might have to revisit my packing strategy. How many rows deep are you - two?
I’m not surprised you can’t see much there. It’s packed tighter than I don’t think I should say, even blurred
Suspect you win on total bottles, even if it’s tricky to find the one you want 
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Two deep, but surely that is standard.
It now occurs to me that the example I posted shows my Riesling section, and for various reasons of geometry flutes would show the capsules more clearly. I chose it to illustrate my point, but actually a lot of my wine is in flutes. I suspect you showed Bordeaux-style bottles.
Ooh the photos are helpful. Consensus thus far seems to be stack em in and don’t stress you’ll eventually find what you’re looking for.
How sexy does this look though… ? 
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You’ll pay a lot for all those sliding shelves…
Stack them in, yes, but write it down…and try to work out which wines are likely to be drunk first. You will still end up taking about twenty bottles out to find the elusive one though…and then discover that you’ve drunk it already and forgotten to mark it off!
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Yes, you really need to keep track of what is on each shelf. It might also be an idea to do an annual stock-take to correct errors.
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would recommend the annual stock-take approach…I do one and have always missed something
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Definitely do at least one stock take a year. I usually find 4 or 5 ‘missing in action’ and about the same which are there but not recorded! Latter are usually one off single bottle buys or gifts that I’ve not written down.
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