Reviews you can trust.
See why.The Best Wine Coolers
Warm white wine? No thanks. These gadgets help your wine stay cool.
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See Everything We TestedWhat You Need To Know
Wine coolers promise to keep already chilled wine cool and accessible throughout your dinner party or summer afternoon on the porch. Unlike ice buckets, which they resemble, these coolers are relatively compact and require no ice, making them less messy to use and less likely to overchill your wine. Some coolers have reusable cooling inserts that must be placed in the freezer overnight, while others can be placed directly in the freezer. The simplest models claim to need no freezer time at all to keep your bottle cold. We wanted to know whether any of these coolers deserved a place at our table, so we bought six models priced from $14.19 to $54.95 and chilled 24 bottles of wine to put them to the test. (To establish a uniform starting temperature, we left bottles in the refrigerator until they reached about 40 degrees—a temperature many wine professionals would say is too cold for optimal flavor.)
Tracking the temperatures of both full bottles and bottles whose contents were poured out over an hour (simulating real-time use), we soon confirmed that all the coolers kept the wine significantly colder than it would be if you simply left it out. It took just 50 minutes for wine sitting on the counter to warm up 10 degrees—an increase that we think would be unacceptable if your bottle was at the right temperature to begin with. By contrast, even the least effective cooler took 1 hour and 20 minutes to reach that same benchmark, and most models did much better.
Two factors made certain models keep the wine cooler for longer. First, the height of the cooler: We liked models that were tall enough to fully enclose the wine bottles—coolers that were shorter than 7.5 inches exposed the shoulders of the bottles to the air and let them warm up faster. Second, the style of the cooler: Simple coolers were easier to use—no need to store any inserts in the freezer overnight—and did a perfectly respectable job of protecting the wine, keeping it within 10 degrees of its starting temperature for an average of 2 hours, more than long enough for two people to finish drinking a single bottle of wine. Coolers with freezable inserts required a little forethought (and freezer space) to use, but they did an even better job of maintaining cold temperatures, holding wine within 10 degrees of its starting temperature for an impressive average of 6 hours. We think this extra time is handy if you don’t know when you’ll be serving your chilled wine.
Our favorite wine cooler, the Oggi Stainless Steel Wine Cooler with Freezer Inserts ($20.39), is a peerless performer, capable of holding wine within a single degree of its starting temperature for almost 5 hou...
Everything We Tested
Highly Recommended
- Ease of Use: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
With four removable freezable ice packs buffered by a 1/2-inch-thick zone of air, this wine cooler did a superb job of keeping wine cold, taking a whopping 7 hours to allow the wine’s temperature to rise 10 degrees. And it maintained the wine’s temperature within a single degree for an average of 5 hours. One minor caveat: The inserts must be completely frozen before they can be used, or the cooler won’t be as effective.
Recommended
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2 stars out of 3.
This attractive stainless-steel cooler’s opaque interior and double-walled insulation meant it did a good job of keeping wine cold, allowing its temperature to rise just 5.6 degrees within an hour. Better still, it required no special preparation or time in the freezer—it’s ready for use right out of the box. The one downside: It’s quite expensive.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2 stars out of 3.
This cooler required no special freezer inserts or preparation to use. And its tall sides and double-walled construction helped keep the wine from warming up too much—the bottle stayed within 10 degrees of its starting temperature for about 2 1/2 hours.
- Ease of Use: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2 stars out of 3.
With a freezable gel sheath that tightly hugged the wine bottle up to its neck, this cooler kept the wine within 10 degrees of its starting temperature for an impressive 5 hours. If anything, the close contact between the sheath and the bottle meant that the wine got a tiny bit too cold, dropping 5 to 6 degrees within the first 1/2 hour of use—easily fixed by simply removing the bottle from the cooler for a few minutes.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 1.5 stars out of 3.
This double-walled wine cooler did a tolerable job of keeping wine cold, maintaining the temperature of chilled wine within 10 degrees for almost 2 hours. It would have performed slightly better had its body not been made of clear acrylic, which let in radiant heat and helped raise temperatures a little faster than the opaque models above.
Not Recommended
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 1 stars out of 3.
We had high hopes for this handsome marble cooler. But using it was a pain: The manufacturer recommended freezing the entire unit and then adding a cup of cold water to the interior before use, making for messy serving. Worse, it just didn’t do a great job of keeping wine cold, allowing it to warm up by nearly 9 degrees over the course of an hour.
Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing.
Miye Bromberg
Miye is a senior editor for ATK Reviews. She covers booze, blades, and gadgets of questionable value.