(Image credit: Bartles & Jaymes) I still remember when (long before my 21st birthday), my dad tossed me a neon pineapple-flavored wine cooler at the beach. “It’s just a wine cooler,” he said, “It won’t hurt you.” Although that statement isn’t completely true (as many of us learned in college), there is something incredibly innocent about these mesmerizingly colored, dangerously easy bottled beverages. And with summer finally upon us, what better time to revisit these nostalgic drinks of our youth (which, by the way, are staging a comeback)? In the name of research, I tasted the entire lineup from Bartles and Jaymes and ranked them. Here is my completely subjective analysis of the flavors of summer. For those of you who aren't familiar, Bartles & Jaymes is a line of 3.2% ABV wine coolers. With their paper labels depicting beach scenes right up to the cap, they aren’t the epitome of style, but they've endured, never truly falling from fashion like other wine coolers.

And after tasting the entire lineup, I can tell you why — they’re just too tasty. From Piña Colada to Exotic Berry, there wasn’t a flavor I couldn’t finish during my taste test. Dominated by a confectionary sweetness, the coolers remained drinkable and refreshing, never quite crossing the line into sickly sweet or cloying. The best flavors transported me to shimmering pools and beachfront resorts, while others made me wonder what combination of dyes can turn a beverage the color of glow-in-the-dark paint. They have the artificial lime flavors of store-bought sweet-and-sour mix down at Bartles and Jaymes headquarters, that’s for sure. While there wasn’t a single flavor I wouldn’t drink (especially poolside), this one fell a bit flat, perhaps because I drink margaritas often, or simply because margarita mix and bubbles alone don’t make for a show-stopping combination. If you like Hi-C, this wine cooler is for you. Neon red in color and super sweet, this malt liquor gem took me straight back to high school.

Bubbly and intense with artificial strawberry flavors, this is the easiest wine cooler to drink without realizing it, but its overly confected flavor kept it at number seven. With its glowing bubblegum-pink color, Exotic Berry wins the prize for looking most like my mental image of what a wine cooler should be. buy dry white wineIt mostly tasted like grape soda, or grape bubblegum, or … grape. best wine affiliate programIn short, it was Welch’s gummy fruit snacks in liquid form.best full bodied red wine for cooking Like Margarita, Mojito doesn’t deliver the full flavor of its cocktail brethren, but strong mint flavors added a refreshing and unexpected herbal twist. Both on the nose and the palate, this cooler was extremely refreshing.

With this mojito in hand, it was easy to imagine myself lounging in the rainforest, instead of standing in a messy kitchen in yoga pants.Bartles and Jaymes Fuzzy Navel beat out its Seagrams competitor in a side-by-side match. The color of Tang and heavily orange-flavored, this cooler tasted by far the most natural. Peach took a backseat to citrus flavors, but I couldn’t put this bad boy down. The lone cooler that doesn’t include artificial colors, Sangria truly tasted like its vinous inspiration, and reminded me of happy hours spent sipping fruity, boxed red wine on bar patios. In fact, it was actually better than some of the sangria I’ve paid much more to enjoy. Good move, Bartles and Jaymes. Jolly Rancher meets black cherry soda in an intoxicating love story. Very, very dominated by berry flavor, this cooler swept me off my feet. Unlike Exotic Berry, Pomegranate Raspberry delivered the flavors I expected without any chemical aftertaste. This tropical cooler is everything I want from a beach vacation: too much sun, lots of coconut, and true pineapple flavor.

Honestly, the flavor is identical to pre-made Piña Colada mix you’d find at the grocery store, but the carbonation keeps it fresh instead of cloying and heavy. I may have consumed the entire four-pack in one sitting. Which reminds me why I rarely indulge in these tropical classics — they’re hard to put down. What's your favorite B&J cooler? Share with us in the comments.Our test coolers, from left to right: the Whynter, Equator-Midea, Vinotemp, Sunpentown, Wine Enthusiast, and Jenn-Air. Wine coolers are designed for short-term storage as opposed to cellars, which are for longer-term aging. The biggest difference is that while coolers protect against light, vibration, and temperature fluctuation, a cellar also protects against humidity. If you’re in the market for something to store your wines long-term, our experts all recommend the EuroCave ($2,000 and up). These wine cellars (ahem, wine cabinets) are the gold standard for storage, but with a temperature range of just 50 to 57 degrees Fahrenheit, they’re definitely not meant for serving.

In fact, a lot of the wine experts we talked to suggested that a wine cellar might be what you really need. Matthew Goldfarb, a wine cellar consultant in Los Angeles, pointed out that the ideal storage temperature for red and white wines is 55 degrees — which happens to be a great serving temperature for a lot of them too. “For many clients, I recommend investing in a high-quality cellar as opposed to a dedicated wine cooler, and just chilling whites to temperature in the kitchen fridge for a couple of hours before serving,” he says. But who wants to wait? For this review, we focused only on wine coolers that’ll have your wines at the right serving temperature at any moment — no need to pre-plan. We looked at 151 units from 46 of the top manufacturers, including models that can hold up to 30 bottles, the size of cooler that 90 percent of consumers seek out for home use. We eliminated any cooler without adjustable shelves. If shelves can’t be adjusted, you are limited in the number, size, and shapes of the bottles you can store — not ideal for anyone with a varied collection, let alone an upcoming dinner party.

With removable shelves, you can fit more bottles by stacking them like firewood, plus have the option of storing opened bottles standing up. Adjustable shelves offer flexibility, especially when it comes to mixing and matching bottles of different sizes. We made sure they could keep both whites and reds at the right temperature. According to Wine Spectator, the optimum temperatures for serving are: 40 to 50 degrees for light dry whites, rosés, and sparkling wines; 50 to 60 degrees for full-bodied whites and fruity reds; and 60 to 65 degrees for full-bodied reds and ports. We cut any cooler without that full range of 45 to 65 degrees. We took into account energy efficiency — or at least, we tried to. Manufacturers are not actually required to list energy consumption for wine coolers, unlike larger appliances such as full-size refrigerators. Part of this is because, for a long time, wine coolers were considered luxury items and few residences had one: Regulating their energy efficiency just didn’t matter.

As they (and wine in general) become more popular, more testing and regulations will apply — in fact, as recently as March 2016, the Department of Energy began developing a proposal to include wine coolers as covered products under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, and California Title 20 already has minimum standards to regulate the energy efficiency of wine chillers sold in the state. The amount of energy a wine cooler uses depends on how many hours per day the fan or motor is running, plus variables such as how often you open the door and the ambient temperature of the room. It’s measured in kilowatt hours per year (kWh/year). Some manufacturers do estimate the energy consumption of their coolers; of our 65 remaining contenders, 15 used 400 kWh/year or less, which is right at the California Title 20 cutoff for coolers this size. We got our hands on six wine coolers (and a bunch of bottles of wine). The 15 models that listed their energy consumption were from just six manufacturers, so we ordered one from each.

To keep our comparisons as consistent as possible, we chose the 16- to 18-bottle cooler from each brand. We played around with them all, pushing buttons and pulling out drawers, then tested each unit to find the accuracy of their temperature settings at 49 and 64 degrees Fahrenheit and how easily they could accommodate wine bottles of different sizes: typical Bordeaux bottles, a 14.5-inch tall sparkling wine, a 13.5-inch Riesling, and a chubby Moscato. (We also popped some corks and downed some wine — for the science!) The worst wine coolers of the bunch were awful: Their doors weren’t level; their controls weren’t accurate; and the “touchscreen buttons” just didn’t work. The best were stylish beauties, with sensitive controls and air-tight seals. Two of our test coolers, the Vinotemp 15 Bottle Touchscreen and the Equator-Midea 16-Bottle Wine Cooler, fell far short of expectations. The Worst Wine Cooler We disliked the Equator-Midea right out of the box.

From its sticky, tough-to-remove protective shrink wrap to a dented interior dial thermostat located way at the back, we knew at first blush it wasn’t likely to win us over. And then we saw that the door hung a half-inch lower on one side than the other. After we plugged it for a few days, we opened that janky door to see the ceiling of the unit was wet and icy after being on for a few days (hello, soggy labels). There was no interior light and no digital temperature setting — instead you twist a plastic dial and just hope for the best between Min., Normal (?!) and Max. It was the most reminiscent of a college dorm mini-fridge of all the models we tested and, what’s worst, at $299 it’s not even the cheapest. An icy interior formed not long after we plugged in the Equator-Midea 16-Bottle Wine Cooler. Runner-Up for Worst Wine Cooler The Vinotemp couldn’t really fit the full 15 bottles. The lower half of the compressor unit has a bump-out to accommodate the cooling mechanics, leaving it only 8.75 inches deep.