Free-standing wine coolers are wine coolers with the ventilation on the backside or all around the edges which means that it has to be placed / installed in such a way. We recommend leaving 10 cm of air gap  to the left, right and above the appliance.

Installing a built-in / built-under wine cooler is easy, but in order to get best possible result and design in your kitchen, please consider these things:

1. Align the door height with the rest of your kitchen doors. We offer built-under wine coolers with different door heights (700, 720, 780 and 800 mm) in order to align with your kitchen supplier. Please measure or ask your kitchen supplier about the height of the kitchen door. On the WineCave-series we also offer aligned hinges in order to keep this alignment, whereas a lot of other products offer a door hanging 2-3 mm below the hinge / carcass of the cooler.
2. Install the plinth (socle) in a nice way. All WineCave products offer removable plinths, which means that you can keep the kitchen (often wooden) plinth in front of the wine cooler, as long as you leave proper ventilation (ofter 300 m3 is recommendation / required) in the plinth.
3. If you have a wine cooler from WineCave or WineKeeper series with a handle, please know that you have change this handle into a handle from another supplier since the handles to these wine coolers and 320 mm long, which is a standard measurements for most European markets and suppliers. The regular stainless or black handle can therefor be matched with your brassed, chrome or bronze kitchen handles for instance.

The light setting differs from product to product but most units (all WineCave and WineKeeper units) offer two options: 1) the white LED-light is always on, or 2) only on when the door is open. The setting is changed by pressing and holding the light-key for 4-5 seconds.

There are some noises coming from a wine cooler. These often come from the compressor and is connected to the compressor going on and off. This is normal and will occur a few times an hour. Most wine coolers offer a noise level of 39-41 dB. mQuvée wine coolers are very quiet in its design and most WineCave and WineKeeper units offer noise levels of a low as 35-36 dB.

The compressor in most of our wine coolers is “inverted” which means that they go on and off to keep the energy consumption to a minimum. If setting the temperature to, for instance, 8 degrees the compressor will do its job and push the temperature to 6-7 degrees and then stop working to let the temperature go up to 9-10 degrees, a few times an hour. The average temperature will be 8 degrees and since liquid (wine) is not affected in the same extent as air the wine will be kept at the correct temperature and not affected by the slight temperature differences. See the diagram below that might clarify.

The capacity on almost all wine coolers is based on a botted called Bordeaux bottles, which are 76,1 mm thick and 300,5 mm tall. Most wine coolers will fit thicker bottles such as Champagne and longer bottles such as Riesling, but please know that the capacity will be affected and most probably reduced when using other bottles than Bordeaux. If you are uncertain of whether your bottles will fit or not – please contact us. mQuvée offers Champagne wine coolers such as WineCave 700 30S and 60S that might be a good for you if your collection of Champagne / Bourgogne bottles are greater than your interest in Bordeaux wine.

Built-in or built-under wine coolers are placed on the floor under your kitchen countertop, like a dishwasher, and the integrated wine coolers are most often places in a tall cabinet like a built-in oven or microwave. However the built-in products from mQuvée (WineCave series) are also possible to place completely free-standing since they are neatly designed in the body as well. The integrated WineKeeper-series from mQuvée is considered integrated but can also be placed under the kitchen countertop since it ventilates in the front.

When the European Union changed the energy legislation / labelling 2021 the energy classes of most appliances changed. Energy class A+++ to D was changed to A to G, making it easier for customers to know which products are more energy efficient than others. All energy labels changed in 2021 and most mQuvée wine coolers went from energy class A to G, but with the same energy efficiency and consumption. However, since 2021 we have been working hard on improving our energy ratings and so most wine coolers from mQuvée are now F rated, or even E-rated instead of G.

The energy consumption in a standard wine cooler in the kitchen ranges from 75 kWh to 180 kWh which is very little compared to other appliances in your kitchen.

Depending on whether you wish to store wine over time or keep your wine ready for serving we recommend different temperature settings. Storing wine over time should be done at 11-13 °C, but serving wine is another story. Please see our recommendations below but keep in mind that serving temperature is subjective and personal.