You can pretty much always find a bottle of white wine and one of Prosecco in my refrigerator. Which is really a shame when you think about it because not only should they not be committed to the same temperature, neither temperature that either should be chilled to is what a kitchen refrigerator is kept at. I used to have that handled by way of a stand-alone wine refrigerator that could handle different temperatures in different zones for different wines. Two refrigerators in fact. But those days are over.
Some of you let that pass right on by. Some noticed but didn’t notice. Some are just now wondering in almost 700 posts I’ve never given any indication of being a garden variety sot. Why so much wine? It actually isn’t a mystery of so much wine as so many refrigerators. Let me explain. If I can.
Many years ago I saw this really nice counter top wine refrigerator for some ridiculously cheap price in a remainder store. (Tuesday Morning actually if you have one of them near you. You can check them out or not. I get nothing for mentioning them. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure why I mentioned them. Anyway…) I looked it over and decided it would sit nicely on the bar in the family room of my old house.
This was all going on during my wine phase. I would go to the local winery every other week and always would bring something back. There were trips to the Erie and Niagara wine trails. I would explore the neighborhood wine shop for an interesting find. (By the way, one of my favorite methods for selecting new wines was the look of the label. I said I was in a wine phase, not that I had become a wine expert.) (Wait. What was I saying? Oh, right. Labels. It was by that very method that I discovered Plungerhead Lodi, a respectable old vine zinfandel.) (I don’t get anything from them either.) (Don’t worry, that didn’t go into the refrigerator. I’m not that much of a Neanderthal!)
Since I was also in a phase where I had to go overboard with everything, I had to have a separate refrigerator for wine. It couldn’t go in the beer refrigerator. The optimal temperatures for beer and wine are nothing alike. And I was in a wine phase. I needed that wine chiller. And by all that was alcoholic, I got that wine chiller. So shortly after I spotted it, the countertop wine cooler was in the back of the car and we were heading home.
Now that worked well for a time then I noticed a problem. The bar and its counter, upon which sat the countertop refrigerator, were in the family room in the lower level of the house. A reasonable place to watch hockey and drink beer. But not wine. Wine was had with dinner, after dinner, in the evening on the patio, and occasionally in the hot tub, all upper level activities. I decided that if I drank wine upstairs I had to store it upstairs. Suddenly the cute little wine refrigerator sitting so neatly on the corner of the bar was inconvenient. I had to correct that. And since I was making more money than sense, I couldn’t just move the one I had.
So it was back on the hunt. In fact, it was back to Tuesday Morning (who still isn’t giving me anything for mentioning them, the nerve!), where I found an upright wine refrigerator with two zones, each one’s temperature individually controlled so you could keep different wines at their own optimal temps. (I was getting better in this wine phase thingy.) Of course I had to have it, so it came home with me and went into the sun room on the upper level where after dinner drinking and near where during dinner drinking and on patio drinking and drunken hot tubing drinking happened. Yet all the while the cute little counter top wine cooler continued to cool wine on top of the counter on the bar just in case I had the urge to raise a Riesling while watching hockey on the big screen. And all was right with the world. For several years actually.
But then I moved and the new place doesn’t have an upstairs or a downstairs or a dining room or even a hot tub. I really wanted somebody in the family to take custody of one or the other of the wine refrigerators but my sisters already had their version and my daughter didn’t have room. So both refrigerators were sold and less was right with the world for now I have to keep my Prosecco chilling next to the orange juice.
But that really isn’t such a bad thing since most Sunday mornings they get together anyway. Well, I still have a patio.
The Real Reality Show Blog 
You could make life easier and go with red–my choice. No refrigeration needed. I think. But then I’ve not checked Tuesday Morning.
Ah, but if I had done that, what would have I written about this week?
Having read your blogs for a bit, I don’t think you’d be that hard up for a topic. Really.
I am a wine barbarian so it all sounds good to me.
I love the whole Tale of Two Wine Fridges. I too tend to judge a bottle by its label. Which I am sure should be some kind of sin against wine, because I definitely don’t like to do the same with people (though I do, unfortunately). Though your post is lighthearted it does remind me of the “point in time” we are living in and how its too easy to forget that.
I’ve heard a few lines from shows or music lyrics that amount to this: We don’t know they’re the good old days until they’re gone.
Maybe that’s just one of many cosmic jokes played on us by the universe, but in a way I think it’s an invitation. How can we live in such a way that we know the gift of that wine refrigerator (and the second one too) are just passing by? That we neither own them, nor own the moment they belong to? That we’re all just visiting, humans and zinfandel and two-zoned refrigerators?
I don’t have the answer, but it’s a lot to think about in the morning when coffee, not proseco, are at hand.
That certainly is a lot to ask of a cup of coffee. Very true though. I thought I’d have those wine refrigerators forever. Right along with an awful lot that isn’t around anymore. Now can use a drink. 🍷
The last time I bought wine, I got a bottle of (you know, I don’t know what fancy-schmanchy type it was) stuff in the shape of a cat.
The bottle, that is, was shaped like a cat, not the contents, which, being a fluid substance, took on the shape of whatever vessel contained it.
I think I stored it in the fridge next to some cheese and old vegetables. Guess I’m not very good at this wine phase stuff.
I still have the bottle, though.
I also have an empty bottle where the label declares the brand of the wine ‘Buehler.’ With me being an 80’s movie aficionado, I couldn’t pass that label up. Don’t remember if the wine was any good?
Still having the bottle means it was good stuff, if not what was in it then what was keeping what was in it in it. And what more can you ask of an alcoholic beverage?