Here's How To Chill A Bottle Of Wine In A Hurry

There's a fine art to chilling wine. Depending on what you are drinking — whether it's red, white, or sparkling — the wine should be chilled to different temperatures for the best drinking experience possible (via Heritage Vine). But buying a wine storage fridge with climate control can be incredibly expensive and takes up space. If you depend on using your normal fridge to help you chill the wine you plan to serve, then you have to think ahead and allow enough time for the wine to reach the right temperature. 

But what if your day gets busy and you discover that the bottle of Chardonnay you've been anticipating has been sitting on the counter all day instead of in the refrigerator? Fortunately, there are a few different ways you can quickly chill a bottle of wine without hours of preparation.

Two of the best methods for chilling wine fast include adding frozen objects into the wine. Epicurious suggests using frozen wine stones or grapes, as neither should dilute the wine. To chill a whole bottle at once, you can wrap the vessel with a damp towel and place it in the freezer, which should reduce the chilling time by half. But there is one method that works even better.

While those tips can work in a pinch, the best method that even your oenophile friends will approve of only takes five minutes. The magic is nothing more than an ice bath with salt. After trying many different wine chilling tips, Serious Eats found that this method can chill a bottle of wine in an astonishingly short period of time. The key, however, is to move the bottle around in the salt and ice bath, which means you'll be doing some babysitting. The movement, such as twisting the bottle around in the freezing mixture, allows the wine's temperature to drop by an estimated 10 degrees every minute.

While moving the bottle and stirring the salt and ice mixture is important, you also need to make sure you have plenty of the mix making contact with the glass. The vessel you use should be big enough to allow the freezing bath to surround the bottle and fully cover the bottom. So if you're using this method, be sure to choose a bowl that's large enough and definitely don't skimp on the ice or salt.