Guides
Avoid problems with your wine cooler in the summer heat
Worried that your wine cooler won't be able to cope with the summer heat?
Luckily, there’s something you can do yourself to keep your wine cool all summer long. It’s first and foremost about the placement of the wine cooler and about giving it space to “breathe”.
In general, there are three different ways to place your wine cooler
A free-standing wine cooler is intended to be free-standing on the floor in e.g. a living room or kitchen and is not suitable for built-in use. If you make sure to give your freestanding wine cooler 2-3 cm of air at the back, and the same on the sides, it has the opportunity to get rid of the warm air and cool your wine down inside the cabinet itself. A freestanding wine cooler that is built in will quickly “suffocate” and break, as it cannot get rid of the excess hot air.
A built-in wine cooler typically has the same width as an ordinary kitchen unit (60 cm). This means that you can pull out a kitchen unit and insert a wine cooler instead. You are already familiar with the concept of dishwashers under the worktop. A built-in wine cooler must be able to get rid of the heat at the bottom of the wine cooler. This is typically done by means of a grate that draws cool air to the compressor on one side and then the air is released again on the other side. Since the wine cooler is built-in, the grate at the bottom of the wine cooler will be its only opportunity to breathe, and it is therefore important to ensure space for this, e.g. at the base.
An integrable wine cooler usually fits directly into a kitchen unit. This means that, unlike a built-in model, it does not replace a kitchen module, but fits into an existing module. The door of an integrated wine cooler has the same width as the kitchen unit, while the rest of the wine cooler is slightly narrower to fit into the kitchen unit. The integrable wine cooler also needs air, which typically happens via a grate in the bottom of the kitchen cabinet that draws in cool air. In order to get rid of the excess hot air, there must be an option at the top of the kitchen cupboard for the heat to escape. For this purpose, many people choose not to have a top on the kitchen cupboard at all, but you can also simply install a grid or cut a hole in the top of the kitchen cupboard.
Hear Jakob tell you more about placing wine coolers
Give your wine fridge room to breathe and it will give you perfectly tempered wine for the rest of the summer (and years to come).