You can now buy a wine fridge at Lidl and it costs next to nothing
Crazy about wine but have neither the money nor the space for a fancy climate-controlled wine cabinet, yet still want to keep your wines at the right drinking temperature? Simply create your own mini wine bar with this nifty little fridge, which can hold eight bottles. For just over a hundred euros, in my opinion, the best quarantine investment ever.
Cold or lukewarm beer, hot or cold coffee… The same product at a different temperature creates a completely different experience. Wine is no different. Of all the factors that can influence a wine’s taste, temperature has perhaps the greatest impact. A wine fridge like this is therefore certainly not a pointless purchase.
Take the test
Hold your nose over three glasses of the same white wine, each at a different temperature—say 7°, 11° and 15° Celsius—and you’ll be amazed at how different the aromas are. Different aromas are released at different temperatures, so there is a temperature at which the wine tastes best. Yet things often go wrong.
Too cold, too warm
In practice, white wine is often served too cold, while red wine is served too warm. In the case of white wine, this isn’t so bad; letting it warm up by waiting a little (or speeding things up by holding the glass in your hands) isn’t difficult and happens quickly. Red wine that is too warm is trickier. ‘Drink at room temperature,’ is often the advice. Well, hello—that means the room temperature of the beginning of the last century, not the 23° Celsius to which most people heat their homes!
Depending on the type of wine, somewhere between 14° and 18° Celsius is usually excellent. Above that, the alcohol starts to dominate, masking many exciting aromas. With this gadget, that’s a thing of the past; you can always keep red and white wines at the correct serving temperature.
Always the right temperature
You may (rightly) be wondering what the correct temperature actually is. As a rule of thumb, you can use the following temperatures:
- Serve fresh white wine, sweet wine, sparkling wine and rosé at 8-12 °C
- Serve fuller, more complex white wines at 12-16 °C
- Serve light red wines at 12-16 °C
- Serve full-bodied, tannic wines at 15-18 °C
For your kitchen counter
This wine fridge is nice and compact, so put it on your kitchen counter and you’ll always have bottles at the right temperature within reach. The Lidl wine fridge costs €109 and you can order it here. Now all you need to do is buy a few grapevines to make your own house wine, and you’ll get through the rest of the intelligent lockdown just fine.
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