Keeping Your Cool – Wine Coolers
Let’s get the semantics out of the way first. A cooler (in this sense) does not actually cool the wine, as in reduce its temperature. But that’s ok, we have fridges for that. The point of a wine cooler is to keep a wine at a constant temperature as long as possible, without breaking the laws of thermodynamics of course.
Depending on the climate, coolers are nearly always useful for white wines and sparkling, but if you’re in a warm environment then they can also help reds from becoming too warm and soupy.
So what materials are best? Plastic generally looks cruddy, so for me it’s in between ceramic and wood. Ceramic has a slightly more earthy (well…duh!) aspect to it, and possibly more ornamental. Wood is more natural and – this is important for those with kids – less brittle so could probably survive being dropped (though I hope no bottles are harmed during the testing of this theory).
Here’s one I tried in the height of the English “summer” and can heartily recommend. Made from beautiful oak in bonny Scotland it not only looks the part, but also kept wines chilled for several hours outside on a warm day.
I don’t want to mention the “c-word” this early in the year, but it would make a great Xmas gift for the winelover in your life.
See www.coolwines.biz for more details.
That looks really nice, Frank. We do have a terracotta one. It would be really useful as we dine in the garden a lot in summer, but it has a load of chisels in it and I always forget to use it.
The wooden one looks more attractive. The problem with our version – it is too narrow to take a wider bottle, only the Bordeaux type of bottle fits. It was a gift, but something to bear in mind if buying one.
The wooden wine cooler will take bottles up to prosecco. For champagne I only make them to order.