Ina Garten's Trick For Cooling Your Wine In A Flash

Oct 08, 2023

Whether you have surprise guests, an impromptu party, or it has just been a day, sometimes you need to chill your wine in a hurry. A fast blast in the freezer often cools the container, and forgotten freezer wine can result in an alcoholic explosion that gets you no closer to your chilled vino. Let's review the top methods for quickly chilling wine to get you sipping quickly.

According to Bon Appétit, there's some science to bringing room temperature wine down to a chill. Some say that wrapping a wine bottle in a wet towel can decrease the 30 minutes it takes for the wine to chill in the freezer. This method worked best in a commercial blast chiller — but because most people don't have professional-grade appliances, the only thing getting colder will be the stares from drinkers holding empty glasses.

If you chill wine horizontally instead of vertically, it will get colder 50% faster, or you can remove the bottle entirely and focus on cooling the wine instead of the glass around it. Adding frozen grapes or wine cubes to your glass might help, but if you didn't have time to chill the wine, you probably didn't make specialty chillers either. Maybe drop a few ice cubes in your glass? Maybe not.

Who needs science when you have Ina Garten to give you tried and true cooking (and drinking) advice? We trust the woman who took a vow to increase her cosmo intake to show us the most effective way to quickly chill room temperature vino. In a recent Instagram post, Garten offered a "pro tip for chilling wine and champagne really fast." The celebrity chef notes that when wine needs to be chilled in a hurry, most people shove it into a bucket of ice and cross their fingers in the hopes that it will be cooled while the night is still young. Instead, Garten suggests filling the bucket halfway with ice and enough water to cover the bottle up to its neck when placed inside.

One follower commented that adding salt to the ice water bath might chill it even faster. Serious Eats confirms that adding two cups of salt to the ice water while continuously turning the wine bottle will chill it to 45 F in five minutes. In the time it takes to watch Ina's Instagram tip and grab your favorite glass, your wine can be chilled and ready to enjoy.