Image via Wikipedia
This is the time of year my inbox is overflowing with special holiday offers. One arrived today from wine.com that caught my eye. Their blog had a post about how to quickly chill white wine. This seems to be a modern equivalent of building a better mousetrap. Apparently, our country was overrun by rodents in the not too distant past and if you built a better mousetrap the world would beat a path to your door.
It's about 5 degrees outside, so any rodent that might have spurred my creative juices is frozen solid. I think a much more pressing problem is how to chill white wine quick enough to enjoy on the spur of the moment when you haven't had the forethought to chill it down.
I've seen bottle chillers for sale along with waffle irons, panini presses, and the other assorted gifts that no one would consider buying except during the frenzy of the Christmas shopping season. Bottle chillers are nice and some of the area wine stores (like Aficionado) have them and can deliver a freezing blast so you can enjoy your new purchase when you get home. I don't need another gadget that I would only use a couple times a year.
Green Dragon used to plop a couple of ice cubes in white wine. Not cool.
The blog post I saw today proposed an interesting solution -- frozen spoons. We've not tried it yet, but I have some silverware chilling down now. Stirring an individual glass of wine will instantly cool the wine's temperature.
Green Dragon has developed a nice technique that we use. I have a couple of beer mugs designed to keep beer cool. The acrylic mugs are hollow and filled with fluid that, when frozen, keep your brew nice and cold. The real bonus is that they also serve as mini-chillers for your wine. Pour wine into the mugs, wait a couple minutes, and then pour into your wine glasses. Bam! Chilled wine in about 5 minutes.
A nice way to chill wine during this holiday season is to scoop some fresh snow (I said fresh!) into a large bucket or other container. This gives your party a little festive twist, plus I think it works better than ice because it molds perfectly to the bottle shape.
You could also plan ahead and keep a chilled bottle of white on hand at all times -- but why ruin the fun?
No comments:
Post a Comment