This Simple Trick Chills A Bottle Of Wine In Just 5 Minutes

There's nothing better than a perfect chilled, crisp glass of wine when the days are warm. But when you've forgotten to stick a bottle or two in the fridge far enough in advance of serving, it can be difficult to achieve the proper chill. Though some people opt to pop bottles in the freezer for a while, there's a better trick that can minimize the time it takes to cool your wine and is even faster than the freezer. 

Red wines are best served at 55 degrees Fahrenheit, while white wines are best when chilled to around 45 degrees Fahrenheit. To reach that ideal temperature, it takes around two and a half hours for red wines and closer to three hours for white wines in the fridge. If you try the freezer, white wine will take about an hour, while reds only need about 40 minutes. But if you still don't have an hour to cool down your wine before serving it, then it's time you learned about the ice bath trick sommeliers swear by.

You can make an ice bath using equal parts of ice and water, as well as two cups of salt. Once it is all mixed up, just place the bottle of wine in the ice bath up to the base of its neck and move the bottle around in the bath for around five minutes. Sommelier, Michelle Feldman, told Well + Good that "Ice water chills and keeps a bottle cold faster than cold air can." This is because of the contact the ice cold water has with the bottle she explained. 

It takes about 10 minutes for red wines and 20 minutes for white wines to hit their target temperature in an ice bath. So, it seems you can just stick the bottles in the ice bath and let them chill quickly. But if you need cold wine in five minutes or less, you'll need to put in the added elbow grease of moving the bottle around in the water to speed things up a bit. Give it a try and see what you think, it just might be you new go-to time-saving hack.