Why Use a Wine Cooler
Since most of us are not lucky or rich enough to own a wine cellar, the next best thing is to own a wine cooler. Wine can be a temperamental friend and it requires proper care and handling if you expect it to be good to you. Therefore, storing your wine in a wine cooler is a wonderful way to keep your wine in prime condition, ready for the time you’ll choose to enjoy the next bottle.
Most casual wine drinkers store their wine bottles in the refrigerator, the pantry, or a small wine rack sitting out on the kitchen counter. These are in no way the ideal places to store wine for more than a couple of days. A wine cooler can be an affordable and space saving appliance to buy in order to keep your wine well cared for.
The things that can damage wine the most are temperature, humidity, light, and vibration. A wine cooler can easily prevent and control these dangers to wine. A good wine cooler will properly maintain the optimal temperature and humidity that is necessary in keeping wine healthy. Many coolers come with digital displays that can easily be adjusted. Some wine coolers are divided in order to allow you to store both white wines and red wines at their optimal settings. More expensive models even have the ability to read a wine bottle’s bar code and will automatically adjust its settings for that wine’s particular storage needs.
Keeping your wine in a wine cooler can also protect it from harmful ultraviolet lights. Sunlight and fluorescent light can easily damage your wine in a short period of time, even through the darkest bottles. This can easily be remedied by storing your wine bottles in a wine cooler. While some wine cooler have glass doors for easy viewing of the wine inside, it’s actually better to have one with solid doors. If you do choose to use one that has glass doors, make sure they are coated with an ultraviolet light protector.
You should never keep your wine in, near, or on top of your kitchen refrigerator, or any other vibrating appliance for that matter. The refrigerator’s motor causes too much vibration for your bottles of wine and can diminish their qualities quickly. While a wine cooler also uses a motor in order to cool the wine inside, a quality wine cooler will have either rubber coated racks to minimize these vibrations or rubber mounted compressors that completely eliminate damaging vibrations.
Another thing to consider when deciding to buy a wine cooler is space. If you have 20, 50, or 100 bottles of wine in a traditional wine rack, it can take up significant space in your home and may not be as properly protected from damaging elements as it could be. Investing in a quality wine cooler takes up less space than most appliances and provides your wine the temperature, humidity, and light control that it needs to thrive. So, why choose a wine cooler? Because it’s the smart thing to do and your wine will thank you for it later.
