I'll be the first to admit that both me and my husband enjoy a bottle of wine or two. We would often decide after coming home from a hectic day at work that we fancied sharing a bottle of wine which usually meant nipping to the local shop to buy one. The problem with doing this is they aren't cool, and as my favoured wine is either rose or white, it just has to be chilled to taste nice! This impromptu purchase of wine would ultimately lead to us whacking it in the freezer for half an hour so that it could chill, but the wait is quite annoying, so I took to the Internet in search of a relatively cheap wine cooler. I almost instantly came across the VacuVin Wine Cooler. Selling for a range of prices (as with most things on the net) I managed to get hold of one for just over £9.00 including postage from Wineware.co.uk, after reading a few great reviews on it.

The cooler comes in two colours, stainless steel or black. I settled on the silver as it looked more expensive than the black one and when it arrived I was eager to give it a try! First of all, you need to place the sleeve (the insert of the cooler) into the freezer. I would recommend keeping this in the freezer permanently and then it's not a hurry to get it frozen when you need it. It needs to be frozen for a couple of hours and is then ready to be used. You then insert the wine bottle inside the jacket and within around 10 to 15 minutes the wine is perfectly chilled and ready for supping! The cooler actively keeps wine cool for a few hours, the problem we normally have is that the wine is finished before it stops working (so I'm not entirely sure how long it continues to work for, but it claims to be for around 3 hours).

The benefits of this cooler is the amount of use you will gain from it. I didn't quite realise how much use it would get used when I originally bought it, but it's been all over with us now, and is even in France with us on holiday now! Perfect for picnics, or outdoor use, you can take it with you, keep the frozen jacket cool in a cool bag and then get it out. We certainly fit in with the French who seem to have wine with everything so we are right at home here! We have also been known to use it at home, in our kitchen, yes even though the fridge is right there, it is handy to keep it out on the table and top up drinks as and when 
rather than having to keep getting up and getting drinks out of the fridge. This obviously only helps if everyone is on the same wine, or if you have more than one cooler but I will probably invest in another in the near future especially for the bargain price of £9! I will also find it handy having two coolers as you can then always have one jacket in the freezer so if you do have another bottle of wine after the first, you can simply swap the jackets over so one is ice cold and one is cooling again in the freezer. The cooler fits snugly around an average sized bottle of wine, which maximises the length of the cooling period.

Although I didn't initially realise how much use I would gain from this handy little kitchen gadget, I would absolutely be lost without it. The only thing I will say is I perhaps drink more wine now than I did before, as the excuse of having a warm undrinkable bottle isn't a problem anymore! Oops!