Wine Cooler Buying Tips

If you love wine and started to collect your favorite ones you'll need proper storage place to preserve the quality of your precious vintages. Most of us have neither space nor budget to build a cellar at home. Electric wine coolers and wine refrigerators, however are practical and attractive storage appliances for beginner wine collectors. Gone are the days when wine coolers were considered rare items only to be found in big hotels, they have now become a status symbol for many.

With more and more impulsive buyers purchasing different types of wine coolers, manufacturers are developing newer and more advanced wine coolers. However, you need some buying tips to choose the best product available in the market.

There are varieties of wine coolers available in different categories. Moreover, you have different designs and sizes of wine coolers. If you look into the market or browse the net, you would come across a wide range of wine coolers and wine refrigerators designed to suffice your requirements. With a plethora of wine coolers on offer, it is always difficult to choose the best out of them that would suit your budget. So here are a few buying tips to help you select the one that best suits your needs.

A buying guide to wine coolers

To begin with, first decide on the area of your kitchen where you intend to place the cooler. Now, if you have enough space, you can go for a larger cooler. However, in case there is a space-crunch, get a compact wine refrigerator that could accommodate enough bottles for occasional guests. Being acquainted with the storage capacity not only helps you to determine where you will place the unit, it also allows you to set a budget. Evidently, a 50-bottle storage cooler would be far costlier than the twelve bottles.

It is obvious for wine aficionados that red and white wines needed to be cooled to specific temperatures before drinking. Here are the recommended serving temperatures for different types of wine:
Red wine: 55-60°F / 12.7-15.5°C

White wine: 49-56°F / 9.5-13.3°C

Rosé wine: 49-51°F / 9.5-10.5°C

So if you love both reds and whites and plan to stock up on both types than buy a dual temperature zone wine cooler in which you can store reds and whites in separate compartments and adjust temperature independently in the two zones. For short-term storage, and that’s what wine coolers are designed for, however a single zone wine cooler is a perfect solution to keep your wines cool and away from sunlight.

Quality wine coolers are equipped with automatic temperature control and digital display so setting the temperature and monitoring is simple.

Another major feature to check thoroughly is the shelving. As you know the size of champagne bottles differ from those of wine, so you should look for a cooler with adjustable shelves. That will allow you to fit the shelves according to your need.

Most wine coolers and wine refrigerators come with glass doors so that you can admire and show off your wine collection to your guests. For proper thermal insulation and energy efficient operation opt for wine coolers with double pane glass doors.

UV rays are harmful to wines in the long term so another feature you have to check whether the door of the wine cooler is tinted to filter out ultraviolet rays. Of course there are wine refrigerators with solid doors that block UV light to get inside of the cooler and they also provide more stable temperature, but with a solid-door wine cooler you won’t be able to see and display your prized bottles of wine.

Eventually, it is the finish, style and color that you need to pick before making the final selection. Just imagine placing a crimson unit in your oak kitchen. That’ll look wonderful isn’t it?

Coming to the budget, wine coolers are available in different price ranges. Single bottle coolers are quite cheap and it could cost you around $25 to $90. Wine coolers that accommodate fifteen to twenty bottles of wine have a price ranging between $100 and $250. There are even larger units, high-end wine coolers, and refrigerated wine cellars for the serious wine lovers available at higher costs.

As you can see you have to consider several factors when buying a wine cooler so read a wine cooler buying guide and take a look at wine cooler reviews to gather more information on certain brands and models.