Since most of my friends and family are aware of my wine geekiness, I tend to receive wine accessories as birthday and holiday gifts. So it was no surprise that I eventually unwrapped a Waring Wine Chiller
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It was in fact one of those items I’d never have bought for myself — mainly because I live in a very small (900 sq. ft.) abode and therefore don’t have the room to store non-essential appliances (would anyone be interested in a salad dryer, by the way?). And isn’t that the ideal gift? One that the recipient would never buy for oneself?
In any case, I must admit the Waring Wine Chiller was a pretty cool — albeit geeky — machine. It does exactly what it says: chills or warms a bottle of wine to the ideal temperature, as dialed in manually or by wine type. That said, I’d recommend it as a gift for cork dork who “has everything”. The only caveat — other than the need to store it somewhere — is the noise factor. It is NOT a quiet machine, and the time it takes to chill a bottle of white from room temperature to an ideal 58 degrees feels a little longer if you’re standing there watching and listening. Kind of like a “watched pot never boils”, a bottle of wine will take a seemingly very long time to chill if you have nothing better to do than wait for it.
But hey, if you’re opening a bottle of wine, chances are good you’re enjoying company, right? And therefore you should be socializing / entertaining — not watching a wine bottle chill. I mean really, do you watch grass grow during an outdoor BBQ? Of course not, and if grass growing made an incessant vibrating, humming noise, you’d hardly notice it while playing jarts and arguing politics with your neighbor. Same goes for the buzzing wine chiller — put the bottle in, set the temp, then go into the great room and chat for 10-15 minutes while the wine reaches optimum temperature.
Great deal: Waring PC100W Wine Chiller w/ Metrokane Rabbit Corkscrew Set