Drinking wine releases dopamine in the brain, enhances one’s sociability, and even supplies antioxidants to protect your body against heart diseases and other harmful inflammation. Many people drink wine because it brings some kind of pleasure to your sense of taste, sight and smell.
If you are a wine lover or a connoisseur, you’ll know the importance of storing wine in optimal conditions. Storing them on their sides keeps the cork moist to prevent air and other particles from seeping in, and the right temperature and humidity prevents the wine from ageing prematurely, affecting its flavour and balance.
Why Do You Need a Wine Chiller?
Unless you live in a large landed property, the chances of you having access to a deep cellar with a stable temperature all year round in Singapore is low. Hence, a wine chiller is the best appliance you can get for proper wine storage as it maintains the temperature inside and distributes it evenly to prevent your wines from losing their flavour.
A stable and even temperature throughout the chiller is key to taking good care of your most cherished wines. A good wine chiller will make use of its computer-driven system to control the temperature, a UV filter to block out UV radiation, as well as silicone-suspended compressors to prevent vibrations.
If you’re wondering why wine shouldn’t be stored in a regular refrigerator, wines need to be stored in temperatures between 7.3C and 15.6C, with humidity levels between 65% and 75%. However, regular refrigerator temperatures hover between 1.7C to 3.4C, with humidity levels in the 30% range, which are conditions that will ruin your wine.
What to Look for in a Wine Chiller?
If you have different types of wine that require different temperatures, choose wine chillers with three different temperature zones that can be controlled separately.
2. Where will you Place your Wine Chiller?
There are a few types of wine chillers available — free-standing wine chillers and built-in wine chillers.
Free-standing wine chillers range between sizes, but many of them are tall and big ones with greater capacity and are excellent for those who need plenty of space for many bottles of wine. They can fit between 90 and 195 bottles of wine.
For built-in wine chillers, you will have to get smaller ones or specially designed under-counter wine chillers. They can typically fit between 18 and 60 bottles depending on the size of your kitchen cabinet.
3. Eco-Technology
Wine chillers are required to run for 24 hours, 7 days a week to maintain the optimal environment suitable for your wine, which can consume large amounts of energy. Besides that, they make use of refrigerants to keep the insides cool, and some of these refrigerants are harmful to the environment. Some wine chillers are engineered with eco technology and energy-efficient R600a refrigerant, which is a gas with low global warming potential and ozone depletion potential that is better for our environment.
4. Shelving Type
Many wine chillers have wooden shelves for horizontal storage, while others have display shelves for vertical storage, which is ideal for serving.
Wine chillers with sliding or adjustable shelves are also available, which is useful if you have larger wine bottles. They allow you to rearrange the shelves to better organise your wine bottles.
Some wine chillers even come with adjustable slats to fit your wine bottles better.
5. Other Features
Temperature control, humidity control, a child lock system, and an alert system that notifies you when the environment in the chiller goes wrong are some other useful features to have in your wine chiller. Some manufacturers even include sommelier sets to complete your wine-drinking experience.
Wine chillers may only serve one purpose, but they are an excellent investment if you enjoy drinking good wine. From free-standing to under-counter wine cabinets, you can easily find the right wine chiller with all the features you need.
Shop a variety of wine chillers at Harvey Norman Singapore.
