Whether or not you’d consider yourself a wine enthusiast, you have to hand it to TikTok and IG—wine fridges look good, and, damn it if they aren’t highly functional. Now, that certainly rings true if you’re someone who uses your wine refrigerator with dual-zone temperature regulation or a compressor wine cooler to bring out the best in your most coveted bottles. But, it’s also the case if you’re someone who’s simply looking for wine storage so that your nightly glass of white wine (or chilled red wine if that’s your jam) doesn’t have to age (poorly) amidst the wilting greens graveyard in the back of your fridge.
Plus, with the launch of brands like Rocco, which have made freestanding beverage centers chic, the best wine fridges are now often stylish, as if they’re a focal point of the room itself. So, when bringing you the best wine coolers, we looked at things like bottle capacity, adjustable shelves, humidity control, and consistent temperature regulation, but we also laid the GQ lens over each option—would we want this in our homes? If so, we’ll tell you about it below. Without further delay, uncork a bottle of wine and let’s get to it.
The Best Wine Fridges, At a Glance
The Best Mixed-Use Wine Fridge: Rocco Fridge
We love the Rocco fridge. We told you about it in our last issue of the GQ Home Awards, and when we got our hands on it for this piece, it wowed us even more. But a few warnings: People who come to your house will see this freestanding wine cooler, point to it, and go, “Hey cool,” with its colorful casing and reeded glass door. If you have kids, this thing will be like a moth to a flame and you may have to put a child lock on it (as I did). Otherwise, in testing it, I found that it does just as good a job at chilling Champagne as it does cherry seltzer, so if you’re someone who wants a mixed-use beverage fridge like I was, this is 100% the way to go. It’s still a dual-zone wine cooler with a high-end compressor so you can control it to keep different temperature zones at different temperatures (between 37ºF and 64º F which more closely mimics a regular fridge than other wine fridges).
Its shelves vary in size so on the upper deck, you can load in wine on the five full-size levels and there’s one half-size shelf where you can keep seltzers, beers, or if you live at my house Coke Zeros. The brand says that it holds, “27 Bordeaux bottles, 88 cans, or a combo of both,” FWIW. And on top of all of that, there’s also a companion app which lets you check out your stock when you’re out buying beverages via a camera and lets you control dimmable LED lights. All in all, my experience with the Rocco made it a no-brainer to buy.
This beverage cooler is a beast. Its side-by-side, French door design mean that the beverage area can stay between 35ºF to 50ºF and the wine area can keep to 41 to 64ºF via two separate cooling systems. If you’re looking to stock a lot of bevvies, this isn’t a bad option with the capacity to hold 110 cans and 29 bottles of Bordeaux. Its smart features, like a blue LED light to help you locate bottles also make it a nice display for aesthetic purposes. While this fridge doesn’t have an coordinating app, you can control the storage temperature via push buttons on the inside of the machine. Because of the large capacity, stainless steel detailing, and user-friendly design, we can see this being a great option to store vintages for years or get your nightly pinot noir to the perfect serving temperature. In short—it’s versatile and we like it a lot.
If you’re looking for something to sit below the countertop, snag this Samsung 51-bottle wine fridge. It has two cooling systems that keep your bottles between 45ºF and 65ºF and its slim, discrete profile will keep it out of sight, out of mind until you’re ready to uncork a bottle. You’re probably sick of hearing us call out features like a high-end compressor and blue LED lighting that hits your bottles just-so to spark some ambiance, but hey, here we are: This thing’s got both of those. It also has five smooth-gliding shelves that feel quite elevated and easy to search. While the price point is still an investment, compared to many other undercounter options in the price range, we find this one to be a steal. Bonus points for having a child lock.
If you’re someone who’s looking for a starter wine fridge or you’re certain that you’re not going to need an heirloom design to hand down vintages to the next generation, then don’t overthink it too much. This is a great option for you. If you are not exactly housing $1,000 bottles of wine, the Wine Enthusiast 18-Bottle Dual Zone does an amazing job,” says Thatcher Baker-Briggs, the sommelier and founder of Thatcher’s Wine. “This brand was one of my first wine fridges and has been incredibly stable holding the correct temperature.” It has all the call-outs that other brands have—dual-zone cooling, LED lighting—but with a substantially smaller footprint.
What are the ideal conditions for wine?
A wine cellar is meant to control the temperature of your bottles, says Baker-Briggs, so that the bottles stay at about 55 degrees Fahrenheit with between 50 to 80% humidity. “The cork on bottles of wine is permeable, and to keep it intact, you need the humidity,” he says. This helps when it comes time to open a bottle so that you don’t have to pry a crumbly, dry cork from a bottle. “While I love the texture of a great peach or apple, there is nothing pleasurable about the texture of a bunch of pieces of cork in your wine,” he says. “A great wine fridge will help with that!”
What should I look for in a wine fridge?
There are a few things that everyone should consider when looking for a wine fridge, including:
- Length of storage:
If you’re here, maybe you’ve been fantasizing about a built-in option that can house a collection of bottles that you’ve snagged from around the world—what a beautiful thought. If your reality, though, is more like housing bottles from down the street, Baker-Briggs says something simple should do. “Consider how much wine you drink on a regular basis and how much you need to store. If you entertain a lot and are constantly rotating through bottles, a smaller fridge for 12 bottles should be plenty,” he advisers. “If you are getting into collecting and want to hold special bottles for a longer period of time, something larger that can go in a garage or basement is a better option.”
2. Your space
There are plenty of ways to incorporate a wine fridge into your space. Some are freestanding, some are undercounter and others are built specifically for you and your space. When you’re shopping for a wine fridge to fit your space, first and foremost do a scan to take stock of your room and potentially reach out to an expert if you think a built-in option could work for you.
3. Your budget
It really depends—the more features you get, or the more capacity you acquire, the higher the price. We found $1,000 to be the baseline price for many of the standard models that gain good reviews, but of course, the price climbs or falls depending on the number of features you add.
Do I really need a wine fridge?
You might be asking yourself whether shelling out hundreds or thousands of dollars is worth it for some added temperature control for your vin. Aside from helping with storage and organization, Baker-Briggs says that one of the main reasons to get a wine fridge is to boost the longevity of your wine collection. “A regular fridge is fine… if you plan to enjoy the bottle in a few hours,” he says, “Where a wine fridge comes into play is for long-term storage. Particularly if you are investing in good quality wine, you want to be storing it correctly to make sure you can enjoy it one, three, five, or 20 years down the line.”
Given that, if you’re someone who’s not interested in a place to store wine in ideal conditions, but rather someone who’s going to glug on your sparkling wine a weekend or two in advance, your regular fridge with good ‘ol single-zone cooling (and maybe a wine rack from Amazon) should be just fine. Though, of course, we still wholeheartedly endorse getting a wine fridge to free up some clutter and leave you with a more organized fridge if you so choose.
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