Your friends are coming over for dinner in 30 minutes, and you just got home from the grocery store with a bottle of sauvignon blanc to pair with the pasta you’re whipping up. One problem: The wine is room temperature, not chilled between 45 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit as it should be. Don’t fret —…
1. Salted Ice Water
Slipping Champagne into a briny ice bath will chill it to perfection in just 10 minutes. (In short, salt lowers the freezing point of water by disrupting the formation of ice crystals.) Grab an ice bucket — if you don’t own one, any bucket, cooler, or stock pot will do — and fill it up one-third of the way with lukewarm water. Using cold water will make it more difficult to dissolve the salt. We recommend using a measuring cup for this step as the amount of water will dictate the amount of salt needed; the correct ratio is 1 cup of salt for every gallon of water. Next, pour in the salt and stir the water vigorously to dissolve it. Fill up the rest of the bucket with ice. Place the wine bottle in the ice bucket, hold it by the neck, and spin or stir it every couple of minutes to chill evenly. In only 10 minutes, you’ll be ready to imbibe some bubbly.
2. Wet Dish Towel
If you don’t have an ice bucket on hand, you can use a clean dish towel or a few paper towels to chill wine to its ideal temperature. Run the towel under the faucet to get it wet, gently wring it out to make sure it’s not dripping, and wrap it around the body of the bottle. Then pop the wrapped bottle in the freezer for 15 minutes, and your rosé will be cool enough to serve.
3. Gallon Freezer Bag
This method requires you to decant the wine into a much less aesthetically pleasing vessel, but it works. Use any large container, such as a mixing bowl or stock pot, and prepare an ice bath. Two parts ice to one part water usually does the trick. Now, this is the part you probably don’t want your guests to see: Pour the bottle of wine into a leakproof gallon-size freezer bag, seal it tightly, and gently lower it into the ice bath. Try to keep the seal above the water line to prevent any ice water from seeping in. Your bag of wine should chill completely within five minutes. Whether you serve the wine right out of the bag or return it to the bottle is entirely up to you (we won’t judge).
