Introduction

MiniArt keeps their accessories streaming out for us, and this time they really brings life to the party, with a set of wine bottles and wooden crates. Cheers!!

Kit Contents

The kit comes in the standard sized accessories box, with a nice box art from Booth. The kit contains 324 parts, which are represented as follows:
12 sprues molded in light brown styrene
6 sprues molded in clear green styrene
6 sprues molded in clear brown styrene
1 decal sheet
The instructions are printed on the back of the box.

Review

MiniArt provides us with 12 wooden crates and no less than 192 wine bottles, which is more than enough to fill the crates. The crates holds 15 bottles each and is built up of 11 parts each. There are no real difficulties in the construction, just be careful to align the spacers inside the crate right, or else the bottles won’t fit in each space. The wood grain structures in the parts are a bit on the rough side, but once built and painted, it’s not too bad.

There are also some nice looking decals included for the front side of the crates, which really adds to the realism of these items. I’m not quite sure, that the names of all the wine producers and companies are real logos, though. One of these are “Grad vine de France”, which actually just mean “Great wines of France”, but it still looks good.

There are two kinds of bottles included, short and long necked, and they come in both clear green and clear brown. The only down side is, that the long necked bottles all have an air bubble inside, which is a setback in this set. It’s not really visible, when the bottles are placed in the crate, but if standing out in the open, it can be seen.

MiniArt has provided us with a great decal sheet with lots of different decals for the bottles. These are very easy to use, and I found, that the best way to do this is to fit the decals to the bottles when these are still attached to the sprues. Once dry, I coated the bottles in a semi clear cote, which protects and seals the decals, and tones down the clearness of the clear styrene, which in my opinion is a bit too shiny to begin with. Also paint the top part of the bottles before removing them from the sprue.

If you choose to use the short necked bottles in the crates, don’t bother using decals, because they can’t be seen once the bottles are in place in the crates.

Conclusion

This accessory set is really great for all modellers, both as cargo in vehicles and as part of a vignette or a diorama. It’s an easy and fairly in-expensive way to beef up realism in your build, and I can highly recommend this kit.