It's c..c..c..cold out there!

I've just been out in the lean-to to get a bottle of wine. We use it as an enormous fridge in the winter as it's not heated and so tends to be close to the outside temperature.

The bottle was really really cold.

Because it's the sort of thing I do, I wondered how cold the wine actually was.

So, I measured the temperature of the wine in the bottle using my milk thermometer (the gadget that I use for making sure the milk doesn't boil when making my morning cappuccino). It's an American model so counts in Fahrenheit, (see photo) but nevertheless I was quite impressed to see the gauge read at 38 degrees F. That's about 3.3 degrees C. (Note, photo taken after the wine, thermometer and I had been sitting in the superheated lounge for about an hour!)

3.3 degrees is pretty cold on any scale, especially given that the wine was kept (a) indoors and (b) not in the fridge!

I then thought I'd check out what water kept at room temperature in the kitchen measured. (Nothing scientific here, it was just because I spotted a glass of water on the side which had been there all day!)

It measured 50 degrees F which is 10 degrees C. Brrrr. That's cold for room temp in our kitchen isn't it? My excuse is that we'd only just come in from work and the heating hadn't been on long!

Finally I thought, I wonder what the temperature is of the wine in the fridge? This is where the experiment was *really* headed.

I watched the needle go down, down, down, and then stop at 41 degrees F which is 5 degrees C.
 
1.3 degrees warmer than the wine out in the lean-to!

Amazing!