Chill Out Your Wine

Filed in archive Wine Accessories on October 9, 2006

Since I don't drink a good deal of white wine, though admittedly I've been working on this lately, there is still times when I need to chill a few bottles and there just isn't enough room in our frige.

Now, of course, of refrigerator is on its last legs. It's going on 20 years old, and other than the fact it still keeps thing cold, it doesn't have much else going for it these days. But, frugal homemakers that we are, we've kept her around.

Normally, I'm able to squeeze a few bottles of Riesling way, way in the back. But, wouldn't it be cool, literally, to have a frig just for cold drinks? Including your vino?

From Wine chillers latest remodeling must-have:

Called wine refrigerators, chillers, stewards or wine storage units, these appliances are on the "must-have" list for most new and remodeled upscale kitchens.

"They've gone from the obscure to the expected in the last three or four years," says Kimball Derrick, a certified kitchen designer and owner of the Kitchen Design Studio in Blue Ash, Ohio.

Like warming drawers and wall-mounted pot-filler faucets, Derrick says, many people see wine chillers in trendy magazines or model homes, and "they've got to have one."

"I also think the growing popularity of wine as an adult beverage is behind this as well," he says.

Mark Wolf, a salesman at Recker & Boerger, says most of the customers who buy wine chillers at the appliance store in Montgomery, Ohio, are either "people very serious about wine or those just getting into wine."

"If someone has one, you know they must have remodeled their kitchen in the last 10 years," says Michael Tombragel, who is busy installing wine chillers as the owner of Hyde Park Painting and Carpentry in Cincinnati.

He and his wife, Tracy, put in a 28-bottle wine chiller when they remodeled their kitchen this year. The appliance frees up space in their refrigerator, Tombragel says, and "it looks cool."