Hello all. 5+ years ago I was an occasional poster and constant lurker on
this NG, but 4 years in northern Ohio, the land of no wine drinkers, left my
wine hobby/habit/obsession out in the cold. I now live in the Fresno area
and have been happily pursuing my passion again. Being 1.5 hours from Paso
Robles and 2-4 hours from many of the best California areas has been quite
exhilarating. Paso Robles has been a real treat and a journey of discovery
of some incredible wines I simply would have missed otherwise. There is
some truly incredible "stuff" coming out of this area, and prices tend to be
lower as the name just isn't as marketable yet. Lucky for me.

This new area though, leaves me with a real issue. Since I do not have a
basement, as most CA houses do not, I now own a large Vinotemp, which fits
nicely into a space in my dining room. I think it was a 550 unit, and has
around 300 bottles in it currently. Bottles range from Bordeaux to Rhone to
Down Under to CA mainly. Two things worry me about this set-up:

1. Power outages - The temperatures during the summer in Fresno hit around
100F daily. I know with the wine mass in there, I have some time during an
extended outage, but I'm not sure how long.

2. Cooling Unit malfunction - This worries me the most. If the cooling
unit dies, I have no clue what to do. The whole cooler sits about 6 inches
from the wall, which leaves no room to service the unit and moving it would
be impossible with 300+ bottles inside. Not to mention I have no idea if
anyone could service it or if I would just have to replace the cooling
unit - but I fear that is not a short process.

So, I'm looking for someone smarter than me out there who relies on a unit
like I do - how are you prepared for the above situations? is there a
simple way to repair a cooling unit? Do you keep a spare as backup? I can
see having a 3rd party wine storage facility on backup, but I cant see how
to get the wine there in an emergency. I have seriously thought about
digging a cellar in my backyard, but it's not really feasible at the moment,
and might be difficult anyways given the small-ish yard, housing covenants,
and potential cost.

Just looking for some general feedback.

Thanks all and glad to see a lot of old familar names still posting here.

Dark Helmet (I'm still leary of using anything close to my real name on
Usenet)