Temperatures are rising and whether you’re actually on holiday or not, a summer apéro usually includes some kind of white or rosé wine. However, as many summery get-togethers are quite impromptu, serving those wines at the right temperature can be problematic.
Even though some might serve their reds at room temperature during the colder months, no one likes a glass of grape juice to be served at 30°C. Ideally, you always have a bottle ready to go in the fridge but if you’re not that kind of organised person or if you simply forgot one, there are methods to get that wine cold and ready to serve in a matter of minutes.
1. (Salty) ice bath
If you’ve got an ice bucket laying around (or a bath tub for big quantities), submerging your bottle of wine in a mixture of ice, salt and water may just be the best thing to do. It’s a classic but not without reason. According to a test carried out by Serious Eats, it is by far the quickest way to get your wine to 7°C. In their test, the people at Serious Eats used about 2 kilograms of ice and 600 grams of salt. Put your bottle in a container, add the salt and ice and then add water until it reaches the neck of your bottle. Quick, but you do need to have a lot of ice and salt laying around.
2. Frozen grapes
Next time you go out and buy grapes, do remember to put some in the freezer as well. Given the fact that they freeze well and don’t loose any flavour while defrosting because of their thick skin, they’re the perfect ‘ice cubes’ to add to your glass of wine. Preferably, opt for organic grapes as these won’t release any harmful substances in your drink. Add as many as needed and don’t hesitate to eat them afterwards.
3. Ice cubes
Some purists might frown upon adding ice cubes to a glass of white or rosé but others have completely embraced the practice. In France, they even thought of a name: piscine (meaning pool), because when the ice cubes start to melt they dilute the wine.
Alternatively, you could also choose to invest in some reusable ice cubes. Whether they’re made out of plastic, metal or any other kind of material, the idea is the same: freeze, use, refreeze, reuse. The issue here might be the fact that you’ll need to buy a fair amount if you’re regularly inviting friends over, as one person will go through multiple reusable ice cubes a night and they take a bit of time to freeze again.
4. Frozen spout
Frozen spouts come in all kinds of models and price ranges but the principle is pretty much always the same: you keep these in your freezer and when a wine temperature emergency hits, you insert one in the bottle and at least part of the issue will be resolved, cooling the drink down while it is poured into the glass. Some include a frozen spear reaching all the way to the bottom of the bottle, speeding up the process even more as more of the liquid comes into contact with the cold surface.
5. Pour and cool
As all other methods require at least some kind of preparation or other ingredients, this is a way of quickly cooling your wine for which you just need the bottle and some glasses. Part of the reason why a bottle of wine takes so long to cool in the fridge is the thick glass of the bottle itself. You can pour the wine into glasses, cover them with foil and put them in the fridge to cool. Not only are the glasses thinner than the bottle, the smaller quantity of wine in each glass takes far less time to cool than the full bottle.
