For Days of Wine and Roses
The days when anyone living in an ordinary family home wouldn’t even consider a wine cooler are gone. The change in our drinking and socialising habits and the availability of reasonably priced compact, efficient electric coolers have made the wine cooler a firm fixture on kitchen wish lists.
The lockdowns and the financial squeeze that has followed have given a new boost to entertaining at home. We aren’t quite back to the prawn cocktail and Black Forest Gateau days, but even if it is only pizza, a glass of wine makes a simple meal into a treat – all the better if you have perfect to-serve vino ready and waiting in your wine cooler.People are spending more time at home entertaining – and according to a recent feature in The Times, millennials like to stay at home with Netflix, Lady Whistledown, and a good bottle of wine. The interest in wine has never been greater in the UK and Ireland with consumer spending on wine and beer remaining buoyant. The prosecco boom helped – it is a wine that has to be properly chilled.
Wine drinking is no longer just for connoisseurs, with new polling commissioned by the Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA) showing it is now the favoured alcoholic drink for 60% of UK adults, compared to all other alcohol products. Over half (60%) of UK adults, including the majority in each age group and across all regions of the UK, now choose wine over other alcoholic drinks, amounting to over 30 million regular wine consumers across the country.
The polling also found over half of consumers in every UK region chose wine as their drink of choice and wine is now the preferred drink of choice for more 25-34-year-olds than ever before, with over half (57%) choosing wine over other alcoholic drinks.
Award-winning range
CDA’s wine chiller range is one of the largest on the market with a choice of nine freestanding models holding 7 – 55 bottles and three sleek integrated designs holding 24-57 bottles. The FWC604 recently achieved Best Buy status from Which? Magazine. The magazine said
“This outstanding CDA wine cooler didn’t do badly in any of our tests and aced most of them. It’s an obvious Best Buy and the best wine cooler we’ve tested. This excellent wine cooler chills quickly maintains an accurate temperature and is energy efficient. It’s a very worthy Best Buy.”
The FWC881 was selected as the best cooler for hosting by Good Housekeeping Magazine
Be a wine buff
Buying a special bottle of wine to save for an anniversary, big birthday or family celebration is a fun idea – but the latest research suggests that unless the bottle is stored in cellar conditions it might not be worth drinking when the big day comes.Wine kept in a cupboard at home loses quality and flavour four times as quickly as that stored in a wine cooler – so people buying premier cru wines without facilities to store the bottles properly may be wasting their money.
Perfect serving temperature for wine
- Lighter white wines are best served chilled, between 7-10 ̊ C (44- 50 ̊ F).
- White wines with more body, or oak, should be served at a warmer temperature of 10-13 ̊ C (50 – 55 ̊ F) – just lightly chilled.
- Sparkling wines are best served well chilled, at 6 – 10 ̊ C (42 – 50 ̊F)
- If you over-chilled the wine, it will lose subtle flavours. Leaving the bottle out at room temperature for an hour will solve the problem if it is over-chilled.
- Red wine should be served at 12-18 ̊C to bring out flavours. Red wine that is too warm can taste tannic; if it is too cold, the flavour will be lost.
Humidity is a critical, yet often overlooked feature in the storage of wine. A relative humidity (RH) of 50% to 70% is recognized as an adequate wine cellar humidity level, with 60% the ideal. Without ideal humidity, wine quality may be affected in several ways.
- When the humidity is higher than 70%, it will likely cause mould and degradation of the labels and glue.
- When the humidity is below 50%, corks will begin to dry out resulting in loss of liquid in the bottles and possible oxidation of the wine. When this happens the wine has an unpleasant flavour and smell and is called corked.
