What great idea, a built in wine cooler.

And not just for wine, these little beauties can be used to store any beverage, so suitable for non alcohol drinkers too..

Size matters.

With wine coolers available in a whole range of sizes there should be something suitable.  Coolers can range from 150mm wide and short enough to build under your worktop, to megga machines in excess of 600mm wide and over 1800mm tall with a capacity of almost 300 bottles.  Just imagine the investment required to fill that!

White or red.

Many of the coolers have dual temperature jones and so are able to maintain your wines at different temperatures, offering storage for both white and red with the wines maintained at their optimum temperatures.

A great design feature.

What a fantastic way to fill in that irksome little spot when your kitchen design has a little space left over and you're not sure how to use it.  Back in the day we would have made a tray space, a small open area between cupboards to keep trays, or to accommodate a pull out towel rail, but now you can fill that gap with a wine cooler. Brilliant!  So much more sophisticated that the old wine rack idea, and much easier to clean and maintain.

What are the costs?

In the UK wine coolers are available from around £200.  As you might expect, the cost will increase with the size and capacity of the cooler and some of the giants will set you back over £1500.  Then there is the running cost which again will be linked to the size.  It is very difficult to calculate running cost with any accuracy as there are so many variables to take into account, but all machines will have an electrical consumption rating measured in watts , the higher the more power it uses.  Wine coolers typically will be rated from around 90W to maybe over 250W for the bigger models.

In the showrooms the appliance will have an energy label displayed to explain how efficient it is.  You can find more here.