The internet is full of answers to the perennial question “How to chill a bottle of wine quickly?” Food & Wine alone has covered this topic multiple times over the years. Overall, a bucket of ice water tends to be the winning strategy. But at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, a new contender has emerged: Juno, a wine chiller that uses “reserve microwave” technology.
Juno – which launched at CES and is already available for preorder on Indiegogo – is billed as “the world’s fastest, most innovative, rapid chiller” and “a reverse microwave for cooling” by the company behind it, California-based Matrix Industries. Intriguingly enough, Matrix isn’t known for working in the wine industry; instead, they specialize in thermoelectric cooling technology, and wine just makes for a logical application of their tech.
And if Juno’s claims are to be believed, it’s a really good application at that. The tabletop appliance purports to be able to “chill both white and red wine to sommelier-recommended temperatures” in a “matter of minutes.” And that’s not all: “What we discovered along the way was that Juno can do so much more than just chill wine,” the company continues. “It can turn your freshly brewed coffee cold, transform your hot tea into iced tea, and cool your favorite beer or soda, right in the can.” Just shove the container in the 16-inch-tall machine, press one of three programmable preset buttons, and then watch the LED status bar to see when your beverage is cooled.
“In the past, the Matrix team was focused on capturing waste heat to harvest usable energy in devices like PowerWatch, but with Juno, we’ve leveraged our thermoelectric engineering expertise and proprietary technology to create a TEC engine that removes heat in the fastest way possible,” Matrix Cofounder and CTO Douglas Tham said in the announcement.
“We wanted to create a practical use-case for [our technology] that anyone could benefit from,” Cofounder and CEO Akram Boukai added. “Juno is the ultimate consumer demonstration of how our cooling technology can radically alter the way we manipulate temperatures.”
Indiegogo preorders will continue to be open for the next 26 days, with early bird prices still available at $199. After that, it jumps up to $299. Then, the final product is set to ship in August of this year. Yes, that might be a bit late to get you through summer, but let’s be honest, your bottles of white wine never seem to be at the right temperature when you need them to be all year long.