Wine Coolers

Wine coolers are small kitchen appliances, similar to refrigerators, that keep wine at a specific temperature. They’re extremely useful to wine aficionados and have become especially popular as more and more people are including bar areas in their homes.

Keep on reading to learn more about this handy kitchen appliance.

Types of Wine Coolers

If you’re in the market to purchase a wine cooler, you can choose between three types.

Freestanding Wine Coolers

Designed as a stand-alone unit, these wine coolers can be placed on their own anywhere in your home. Just don’t enclose them from above or place them too close to other cabinets (keep them at a safe distance of about 5-7 cm from other appliances or cabinets) to prevent overheating.

Fully Integrated Wine Coolers

These types of wine coolers can be integrated into your kitchen cabinets for a seamless look. They can be customized to fit the aesthetics of your kitchen while saving you valuable storage space. The most important thing when it comes to fully integrated wine coolers is to accommodate good airflow and prevent overheating. Since the warm air is expelled from the back of the wine cooler, you’ll need to make sure that it can escape through an appropriate channel.

Built-in Wine Coolers

Similar to freestanding wine coolers, built-in wine coolers have front-facing vents and fans located under the unit to maintain the temperature of the cooler and prevent overheating. They even come in sizes that can accommodate a few hundred bottles of wine, depending on the user’s needs. Just make sure to leave between 0.25cm to 0.5cm of space around each side of the wine cooler.

Types of Wine Coolers in Terms of Capacity and Size

Depending on how many wine bottles you’d like to store in your wine cooler, you can go with one of the following:

• Small-capacity wine coolers - the smallest wine coolers on the market with only 15 cm in dimensions, intended for chilling about 7 wine bottles. While they don’t take up a lot of cabinet space, they can only chill white or red wines because they don’t have dual-zone temperature control.
• Medium-capacity wine coolers - slightly larger wine coolers found in either 30cm or 60cm sizes, which are ideal as built-in wine coolers. With the 30 cm wine cooler, you’ll be able to store about 17 bottles, while the larger one can store up to 40 bottles. Most of them have dual-temperature technology, so you’ll be able to store both red and white wines.
• Large-capacity wine coolers - for people with a larger wine collection, large-capacity wine coolers are ideal for storing hundreds of bottles. Most of them are about 60cm in width and 190cm in height.

Additional Wine Cooler Features

Apart from the essential features that all wine coolers need to have, it’s also important to mention additional features you may want to consider, such as:

• Protective features - to keep the wine in optimal condition, some wine coolers have UV glass that shields your wine from the sun, anti-vibration technology that doesn’t disturb the sediment, and even filters made of charcoal that prevent bad odors.
• Additional lights - generally in the form of LED lights that don’t increase the temperature in the cooler but enhance the inside and make it easy for you to locate the specific wine you’re looking for.
• Thermostat features - some models come with pre-set options that calculate wine temperatures and you can choose the specific temperature for the type of wine you’re storing, while others come with thermostats that you can set manually.
• Shelves - if you want to store wines that have standard bottle sizes, you can use any wine cooler with a standard shelving system, however, if you want to store larger bottles, such as champagne or burgundy, you should go with a wine cooler that has a removable shelving system.
• Single-zone wine coolers - as we’ve previously mentioned, a lot of smaller wine coolers have a single zone that’s used to cool wines at a specific temperature. This is why they’re suitable for either white or red wine.
• Dual-zone wine coolers - for people who enjoy both red and white wines, the best option would be to go with the dual-zone wine cooler that allows you to adjust specific temperatures for your white and your red wines.

Wine Cooler vs Wine Refrigerator

Even though the words wine cooler and wine refrigerator are used interchangeably, they aren’t the same appliances. The difference between them is evident when we take a look at the following:

• Cooling technology. Similar to conventional refrigerators, wine refrigerators use compressing cooling technology, while wine coolers use thermoelectric cooling. The latter cooling technology is quieter, doesn’t have moving parts or issues with leaking, and there's no need for circulating liquid. The former is more expensive and less power efficient, which is why wine coolers are preferred.
• Operating temperature. Another main difference is that wine coolers are generally set at a temperature of about 7 degrees Celsius, while wine refrigerators can be set at different temperature settings for different beverages. For example, for white wine, the temperature may be about 7 degrees Celsius, while for red wines, it could be between 10 and 18.

Where to Place Your Wine Cooler

Depending on the layout of your home and where you’d have the most use out of your wine cooler, you may decide to place it in the:

• Kitchen (for easy access when consuming wine with meals)
• Bar area (the ideal place for such an appliance)
• Dining area (a good option if you don’t have enough space in the kitchen, plus you'll have easier access when you have people over)

Tips for Choosing the Right Wine Cooler for Your House

If you want to purchase a wine cooler, here are some of the questions you may need to reflect on:

• What is my budget?
• How much wine would I like to store?
• What is the layout of my home and where could I put it?
• What type of wines would I like to store?
• How big of a wine cooler do I need?

Final Thoughts

Choosing a new appliance such as a wine cooler can be a bit difficult if you don’t know what you’re after. So, we suggest that you first do your research, and then look at potential wine coolers that you think have interesting features. We hope our article helped you get started!