Even if your refrigerator has ditched the cold-to-coldest dial and lets you choose a temperature, it’s still treating your meats, cheeses, and veggies all the same. In recent years, we’ve seen temperature-controlled drawers pop up in more places, which can let you be a little choosy about making everything as cold as you want your sodas. But that still leaves most of your fridge at a uniform chill, so it’s not surprising that it took a wine cooler maker to break the compartment into zones. Perlick added its first tall refrigerator to its lineup, and it brought it to KBIS 2018 to show off.
While Perlick is known for its wine and undercounter fridges, it wanted to expand into something more full-size. Its new 24-inch column refrigerator has four temperature zones you can set independently, and they’ll maintain those temperatures within one degree Fahrenheit. In addition to the main compartment (32 to 42 degrees Fahrenheit) its pre-set categories, are deli, meat/fish, and produce, all of which can be set to between 32 and 37 degrees Fahrenheit. In addition to the main part of the cavity, there’s a two-tier deli tray, a special compartment that slides under a shelf for marinating meat, and a meat and fish drawer. The produce drawer doesn’t pull out but instead tips forward; the design is supposed to let you stand your greens up instead of laying them flat.
“Moisture is a huge part of preservation,” Stephanie Muraro Gust, a marketing manager for Perlick told Digital Trends. The company worked with somaliers for the hydration system in its wine fridges, and brought the tech over for the produce drawer. The refrigerator electronically monitors the humidity in the drawer and draws sterilized water from the evaporator and introduces it into the compartment. While the wine fridges do this automatically (so people don’t mess it up, essentially), for the column version, users can set their preferred humidity level between 55 and 95 percent (by units of 10).
If you want, you can pair the column fridge with Perlick’s new 24-inch column freezer. It also has a stainless steel interior, as well as open bins and a touchscreen panel on the inside for temperature control. Both are available now, though you’ll have to contact a Perlick dealer for pricing.
