Vin Tech: Smart Storage Options for Your Wine

Wine, like nearly every culinary art, is no stranger to smart technology.

With precise temperature requirements, collector preferences and security concerns, wine—and more specifically, wine storage—has been fruitful ground for connected devices.

Here are some of our top picks for smartly storing your vino.

Plum

_Plum

Plum is perfect for the collector who is big on wine but short on space. Once a bottle is inserted into this countertop contraption, it automatically identifies the varietal, region, winery and wine, and prepares the drink exactly as the creator intended—precisely puncturing the cork (or alternate top) and bringing it to the optimal temperature identified by the winemaker. Essentially, Plum provides a speedy, sommelier-curated wine cave for those bottles you’ve been keeping in your kitchen cabinet. And Plum’s dual chambers, which can hold bottles at their ideal temperature for up to 90 days, means you can provide your guests (or yourself) with a little vino variety.

Plum is available for approx. $3260.

Café Wine Center

_Cafe

For the moderate collector with a mind for display, Café offers a 46-bottle wine fridge with a LED light wall that spans the entire back panel, providing a stylish lighting solution for selecting and showing your collection. Owners can control this lighting feature on the Wi-Fi-enabled Wine Center via SmartHQ app, dimming and illuminating their wine storage with the swipe of a finger. In addition to being chic, the Wine Center covers the practical, with a dual zone chiller—store your reds and whites at different temperatures—which, again, can be entirely controlled by the accompanying app.

The Café Wine Center is available for approx. $3260.

LG Wine Cellar Refrigerator

_LG

You can’t talk about high-tech fridges without mentioning LG, and the Wine Cellar Refrigerator doesn’t disappoint. This 65-bottle wine storage solution is Wi-Fi-equipped, meaning users can exercise control over its three temperature zones with the accompanying ThinQ app—but they don’t even need to trouble themselves. Built with LG’s Optimal Preservation Technology, the Wine Cellar Refrigerator automatically works to reduce temperature fluctuations, light exposure and vibrations, while also locking in humidity. And the convenient features don’t stop there. The Wine Cellar Refrigerator includes a smart sensor at the bottom that lets users open the door with a wave of their foot—or with the sound of their voice, as the clever cooler also works with Alexa and Google Assistant. But why open the fridge at all if you don’t need to? The Wine Cellar Refrigerator also includes LG’s InstaView tech, which allows users to simply knock twice on the front glass of the fridge, instantly turning it from opaque to transparent.

LG Wine Cellar Refrigerator is available for approx. $9130.

Sub-Zero Designer Wine Storage

_Sub-Zero

A leading name in lowering temperatures, Sub-Zero offers oenophiles style, security and smart features with its Designer Wine Storage series. Holding 59, 86, or 102 bottles, depending on model size, the Wi-Fi-equipped Designer Series allows users to remotely control temperatures across two to four temperature zones, while dual evaporators maintain consistent humidity throughout. And because collections can often be priceless (sentimentally, if not financially), the Designer Series easily integrates with your home security system, ensuring that your beloved Beaujolais remain yours.

Sub-Zero Designer Wine Storage refrigerators are available for approx. $8195 to $12,060, depending on size.

“Call us optimists. Call us dreamers. Call us whatever the hell you want, but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds. The future is for everyone.”

That ad copy is from the voice-over of a July Meta Platforms META -3.38%.

spot that’s been part of a public-relations blitz to position Meta as the humanist AI company. The message was undercut by the ad’s inclusion of David Bowie’s “Five Years,” a brooding 1972 song about an impending apocalypse. But this week CEO Mark Zuckerberg left no ambiguity, publishing a 6,500-word manifesto—about 10 times the length of this newsletter—with a title that echoed the ad: “The Future is for Everyone.”

That seems to be Meta’s new tagline. In light of sinking public opinion and the company’s thousands of lawsuits from states, school districts, parents, and users, Meta’s public relations have been defensive. This push represents a return to offense, with a chance to distinguish Meta’s approach to AI from other labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, or SpaceX SPCX +9.65%.

“It is surprising that the discourse from many developing AI is so filled with doom,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity’s relevance would rush to build that future.”

Zuckerberg frames what sort of future we build with AI as the central issue of our time. “We believe that delivering superintelligence to everyone is the way to answer this question,” he says. “This has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where individuals can use this powerful new capability to reach their full potential, pursue their interests, and improve their lives and the world more than ever before.”

The flood of words belies the situation on the ground in mid-2026. Americans, at least, have a love-hate affair with social media. A November Pew Research Center poll reported that 71% of U.S. adults used Facebook, and 51% used Instagram. Worldwide, 3.6 billion people use at least one Meta app every day.

But in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in July and August, 61% of respondents said they wanted more government oversight of social media, and two-thirds supported laws to keep children under 16 years old off the platforms. When it comes to Meta in particular, in the 2026 Axios Harris 100, an annual poll about corporate reputation, Meta placed 96th out of 100. It’s only above two other social media companies, Chinese ultracheap retailer Temu, and Spirit Airlines, a defunct air carrier. Regarding ethics, Meta came in last, and it was only ahead of TikTok in trust.

The steady drip of headlines in the teen social media trials isn’t helping. Last week, Meta lost a judgment in New Mexico state court that raised their liability in that relatively small jurisdiction to nearly $1 billion dollars. On Wednesday, jury selection began for a federal case with four states suing Meta over addictive product design, and false marketing that said its platforms were safe for teenagers. In July, Meta claimed that the states are asking for a total of $1.4 trillion in damages, in addition to design changes in the apps. This is part of a multidistrict litigation, where thousands of federal trials with social media defendants are coordinated in Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ district courthouse in Oakland, Calif.

There is a separate such group of thousands of cases in California state court, mostly with individual plaintiffs. The steady drip of bad headlines from the courts will continue unless Meta decides to settle en masse.

Meanwhile, in the second quarter, Meta booked “$2.40 billion of charges related to legal proceedings,” according to its quarterly filing. That may be just the beginning.

Zuckerberg spent 6,500 words getting his utopian message out, but I can sum it up in two: Trust us. The evidence is that Meta has a long way to go to win back that trust.

Vin Tech: Smart Storage Options for Your Wine

For those who love automation as much as they love Cabernet, these devices are sure to satisfy.

Plum

Café Wine Center

LG Wine Cellar Refrigerator

Sub-Zero Designer Wine Storage

Meta is betting on a human-first AI future, but growing legal battles and declining public trust are putting Mark Zuckerberg’s vision to the test.