When I first started collecting wine 30 years ago, creating ideal storage conditions in the harsh Australian climate became something of an obsession! I visited all the greatest cellars across Australia and France to discover exactly what made for perfect conditions to store and enjoy wine. This proved to be the inspiration that launched my career as a wine communicator, and in 2002 I published my first book: Cellaring Wine: Do-it-yourself Solutions and its sequel Cellar in 2005.

There was no such thing as a wine cabinet at your local department store back then!

When Vintec first came to Australia in 1999, they sold just one a week out of the importer’s garage! Since then, the market has exploded to tens of thousands of units each year, and Vintec has held its position as the confident market leader. From the outset, it has always specialised only in wine cabinets. In 2012 I penned an article in James Halliday’s Wine Companion Magazine and noted that already by then the wine fridge had become the latest appliance to become standard kit in eight out of ten high-end kitchen installations.

When Vintec invited me this year to become its Ambassador and to help to share the announcement around its new Luxe Dual Zone 40-Bottle Wine Cabinet, I agreed on the basis that for 20 years I have admired, used and recommended Vintec wine cabinets. I have owned two Vintec cabinets, I showcased Vintec at my dinners and events including Taste Champagne across five states in 2015 and 2017, and today, the tech they have integrated into their latest models is the finest yet!

Over this time, the way wine cabinets are used in Australia has changed fundamentally. These are no longer just the playthings of us wine nerds! Let’s be honest: most people don’t buy a bottle to leave it in the cellar for years. This is why wine cabinets are more common kit these days in kitchens and dining rooms than they are in garages. The right conditions for storing your wine are not only essential for longevity, they are also crucial for convenience, service and maximum enjoyment. How you store your wine directly impacts its aromas, flavours and textures.

Oliver Krug of his fabled eponymous champagne house admits to being obsessed with the quality of wine service. ‘The temperature of service is very important,’ he emphasises. ‘We may work for 10 or 20 years to create Grande Cuvée, ship it in the best refrigerated container, and then you might be served the first Krug of your life as cold as ice, and you miss 99% of the pleasure and the message!’

Antoine Roland-Billecart at Champagne Billecart-Salmon says wine is like a human being in the cold: ‘Put yourself out in the snow and you won’t show anything either, you’ll be all covered up! Three degrees breaks everything in champagne. It should be served at cellar temperature of 10ºC, and never below 8ºC.’ Poured at fridge temperature, sparkling and white wines taste flavourless and acidic. Red wines prefer 18^oC.

This is why the most important feature of the Vintec Luxe Dual Zone 40-Bottle Wine Cabinet is its dual zones, giving you the freedom to simultaneously set half of the cabinet between 6 and 13^oC for your sparkling and white wines, and half between 10 and 18^oC for your reds. You could even be clever and run your cabinet a little cooler in summer, when wines will warm more quickly when they’re served.

In creating cabinets that reproduce the perfect conditions of natural underground cellars, stable temperature is rightfully the first and most important of Vintec’s five pillars of wine storage, followed by optimal humidity, UV-free darkness, vibration-proof stability and pure air quality.

The latest Vintec cabinets also incorporate Quiet Inverter Compressors. Variable-speed operation is ingenious, not only making them quieter, 25 percent more energy efficient and more stable in reducing vibrations, they also provide greater temperature stability and a longer life compared with traditional, single-speed compressors.

This temperature stability is also Vintec’s secret for maintaining optimal humidity. An internal dynamic fan system with carbon filtration provides constant airflow to reduce condensation and mould growth.

Vibrations are also minimised through natural Beechwood shelves on telescopic runners that make bottles fully visible and easily accessible.

One of the key decisions in choosing the right wine cabinet for your home is the shape and size of the bottles that you need to accommodate. The top shelf of this Vintec is optimised for champagne and white Burgundy-shaped bottles, the second shelf for riesling and white-Bordeaux shaped, the third and fourth for red-Bordeaux shaped and the bottom shelf for red-Burgundy shaped. The shelves are not adjustable, so this cabinet is optimised for lovers of a wide variety of wine styles and bottle shapes. You couldn’t fill it with just champagne or Burgundy, for instance. The top shelf easily accommodates both champagne and white wine magnums, but this cabinet is not for red magnums. Vintec offers other cabinets with removable shelves that are better suited to these configurations and even upright storage.

This is a cabinet designed to look the part in your entertaining space! The slick, frameless glass, reversible door looks fabulous. It also plays an important role in creating the optimal environment for your wines, double-glazed for insulation, with anti-UV glass to protect from light. Unlike virtually every drinks fridge, LED lighting has been carefully engineered to subtly highlight your prized bottles without destroying them. It’s UV-free, diffused and dimmable, with cold, neutral and warm colour temperature to match your ambience and your mood!

I have five large wine cellars both in my home and offsite, and the convenience of having wine at hand, stored under ideal conditions at the perfect temperature for service is why I love having a Vintec in my dining room!