You’ve got people headed over for a party, and you thought you’d taken care of all of your entertaining duties. Then, you realize your wine hasn’t been chilled! Don’t worry—we have a solution for you.
According to testing done by Serious Eats, you can chill a bottle of wine from room temperature to its ideal 45 degrees Fahrenheit in just five minutes with ice, salt, and some water. While this method does involve a bit of work, it’s worth it if you need results fast.
First, add some ice, water, and two cups of salt to a large bowl. Then, place your wine bottle in the mixture, submerge it up to its neck, and allow it to sit for a minute. Use the neck of the bottle to stir the mixture over and over. You can take breaks in-between, but the more the salt, ice, and water bath is agitated, the quicker the wine will cool.
After about five minutes of stirring the mixture with the bottle, you’ll have a perfectly chilled bottle of wine. Don’t have time to stir it for five minutes? Just let it sit in the salt, ice, and water mixture, and it’ll still be chilled in 11 minutes.
Why does this work, though? Well, water helps create more points of contact with the bottle, while the salt helps create a freezing point depression. The salt lowers the freezing point of the water so it can get colder, making these two the ultimate wine-chilling team.
So, this spring, if you’re hosting an outdoor dinner or brunch and need to quickly chill some wine, just grab the salt.
