The Best Wine Coolers
This Old House Reviews Team
Wine refrigerators keep your bottles of wine cool until you’re ready to open and drink them. This review examines the best wine cooler options on Amazon.
A wine cooler keeps your bottles of wine stored at the proper temperature to maintain their flavor. They also free up regular refrigerator space so that you can stock it with fruits, vegetables, leftovers, eggs, and other foods. To help you select the fridge that’s right for you, the This Old House Reviews Team researched the best wine coolers on Amazon. Here are our top five recommendations.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005GUA5UY
Le Creuset Wine Cooler Sleeve
What We Like: When you think of a wine cooler, the image that first pops into your head is likely a fridge. However, this product serves a different function. It keeps a single bottle of wine chilled for hours at a time, making it perfect for carrying wine on picnics or to friends’ houses. It is made from pierce-resistant nylon and has elastic bands to better fit your bottle.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0864S2FPR
Ivation Wine Cooler Refrigerator
What We Like: If you have limited floor space, consider this tall and skinny wine fridge that’s only 9.9 inches wide and 17.7 inches deep. It can hold up to 12 bottles in its cavity that has a wide temperature range of 41 to 64 degrees Fahrenheit. Its door is also made from double-paned glass to protect your wine from harmful UV light.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QSJRR4Y
Koolatron Thermoelectric Wine Cooler
What We Like: Though this wine cooler is about the size of an average mini fridge, its thoughtful design uses all of the available cavity space to hold up to 20 bottles. On the outside, is a digital temperature display as well as touchscreen temperature control buttons. On the inside, is an LED light for better visibility.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079YXBBRD
Whynter Wine Refrigerator
What We Like: If you have a lot of wine to store, this cooler has sizing options ranging from 96 to 166 bottles. This particular model holds 96 bottles on 12 removable shelves. It has an interior light strip with nine energy-efficient LED bulbs that allow you to look at your wines without damaging their taste.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085WRC7FS
KalameraWine Cooler Refrigerator
What We Like: This wine cooler can hold up to 46 bottles while fitting neatly into any kitchen or bar area. This fridge has a reversible door and a silent compressor, so you can place it in any room without worrying about it making an intrusive noise or not fitting.
Buyer’s Guide
From mini fridges to full-sized refrigerators, wine coolers come in many forms. To decide which cooler is best for you, consider the following factors.
Temperature Range
Choose a fridge that has a large temperature range to suit various types of wine. Certain wines require a cooler temperature to maximize their taste, while others need a warmer temperature for optimal flavor.
Size
Consider how much space you have for a wine cooler. If you are building a wine cellar or already have one, you won’t be as concerned about size because you’ll have a large space to fill. However, if you plan to put your wine cooler in the kitchen, you’ll likely want one that’s more compact and less invasive.
Bottle Capacity
In addition to the physical size of the cooler, you’ll always want to check its bottle capacity. Bottle capacity ranges from one to over 100. If you host a lot of gatherings, having a large cooler with several bottles on hand may be the way to go. However, if you live in a one-bedroom apartment with limited space, opt for a smaller fridge.
Noise Level
Some wine coolers are louder than others, and depending on where you plan to place it, that could become an issue. A wine cooler in a cellar can afford to be louder. However, if you’re keeping yours in a common area, it’s important that it’s not louder than the average conversation, which is 60–65 decibels. If the manufacturer doesn’t give you a noise rating, you can look at the type of cooling system. While more efficient, compressor systems are louder than their thermoelectric and absorption counterparts.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do I need a wine cooler?
While wine coolers aren’t necessary to enjoy wine, they do enhance the wine-drinking experience because they neutralize the effects that heat and light have on the taste of wine.
What temperature should I set my wine cooler at?
It depends on the type of wine you’re storing. If you have mostly dry white, rose, or sparkling wines, keep your cooler around 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Light reds, full-bodied reds, and full-bodied whites can usually be kept at around 55 degrees Fahrenheit.
What are cooling zones?
Larger wine coolers often offer multiple cooling zones. These zones allow different bottles to be stored in the same cooler at different temperatures. If you have several types of wine that you want to store, it could be beneficial to buy a wine cooler with several cooling zones.
Why Trust The This Old House Reviews Team
This Old House has empowered homeowners for more than four decades with top-notch home improvement content in the form of television programs, print media, and digital content on its website and social media platforms. The This Old House Reviews Team focuses on creating in-depth product and service review content to help inform your purchasing decision for just about any item or resource that you might need for your home. The This Old House Reviews Team has written over 1,000 reviews on products in the home space, from cordless drills to kitchen trash cans, lawn mowers, and dining room decorations.
We recommend products in each review using an intensive research process, spending hours combing through the best available models on Amazon. For a product to make our list of top picks, it must hold a solid sales record on Amazon, have consistently positive customer reviews, and offer unique features, among other factors. After narrowing down our list of recommendations, we conduct additional research and sometimes in-person testing to ensure that the products meet our standards. Once we conclude the research phase, we craft a well-rounded, user-friendly article that includes our recommended products and additional information to help homeowners like you make the right purchase.
The This Old House Reviews Team provides overviews of select products that are top-selling on Amazon and/or popular in consumer searches. Our team evaluates the products based on industry research, consumer reviews, pricing data, hands-on testing in select cases, and other objective criteria unique to a given product line. Unless otherwise noted, these product reviews are intended to help inform buying decisions for DIY or other non-pro users only. Editor’s picks are made by members of the This Old House Reviews Team.