"Wine Thermals": anybody tried 'em?

[Robin Garr]

Blake Gray is all over these in a recent blog post. They look kind of cool (pun intended), but I'm not sure what I think. I'm in total agreement that an ice bucket gets whites too cold, but just setting the bottle down on the table works fine for me. Plus, I'm not sure I have room in my freezer for a block of concrete.

Blake is usually a sensible guy, though, so I'm curious: Have any of you tried "Wine Thermals" or anything similar?

winethermals.jpg

Here's a rarity: a simple, useful, elegant wine gadget

There aren't many good wine gadgets. Most are superfluous crap meant to keep the cycle of useless Christmas gifts spinning. Even the ones I like usually end up gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere.

In the few months since I got a Wine Thermal, I've used it every time I had a white wine. I can't say that for any other wine gadget in the house. (I've moved away from fancy corkscrew devices and am using a very basic model.)

It's attractive, effective and extremely low-tech. I like it so much I feel the need to say that nobody is paying me to write this. In fact, it's going to be a welcome surprise for the Montana-based company.

The Wine Thermal is a block of concrete with a wine bottle-shaped hole in it. You store it in the freezer. When it's time to serve a white wine, you put the concrete block on the table, and put the bottle in it. Simple as that.

Read the full blog post on The Gray Report:
http://blog.wblakegray.com/2014/08/here ... -wine.html

NJ uses a similar product made out of marble or faux-marble compound. Weighs about a ton. Since most of our summer dining is done on the back porch and deck, the "keep kool" fends off the Ohio Valley heat and keeps the wine from warming too rapidly. We place it in the freezer about an hour beforehand and it is ready to go. Used for reds and whites.

[David M. Bueker]

No room in my freezer for a monstrosity like that.

i agree. I also have no room for one in the freezer. But I have been to a wine store/restaurant that uses them when it serves a bottle of white and it seemed to work fine.

Best Wishes,
Glenn

Used a version of this in the past. It's easier to cool wine in the fridge or dump some ice into a metal bucket.

Seems like a solution in search of a problem to me.
Tom

I have a couple of these that were given as gifts. They are handy for keeping wines cool when we eat out on our deck. That is all that we have used them for.

We have a very large stand-alone freezer.

We have a very large stand-alone freezer.

Doesn't every Hoosier?

I tried an inexpensive insulated "wrap" on a trip to Greensboro. Placed in freezer for a couple hours and then put bottle in it for the car ride. Unfortunatley, when the wrap arrived in the mail the fine print said it keeps the temperature down for about one hour--I had expected several hours of results.

That seems like overkill to me. I use a clear acrylic double walled "wine cooler" like this (but without the chrome trim):



I just take a bottle of white from the fridge, plunk it in, and it keeps it cool throughout the meal - at leat an hour's worth. It doesn't need pre-chilling (other than the wine itself). That works well enough for me.

For extended cooling, I just put the wine in an insulated bag with a plastic freezer pack. It works for 3 or 4 hours.