Language
Pulished on Feb. 09, 2023
Whether it is at a banquet or a party, we are always accompanied by a glass of wine. In the hot summer, wine at room temperature is generally not suitable for direct drinking. The room temperature will greatly affect the taste of the wine. Therefore, chilling wine to a suitable temperature is the first step before tasting.
Various methods to chill are emerging one after another. In the past, people thought of putting wine at room temperature in the refrigerator for a while before drinking. However, people are discovering that there are many disadvantages in putting wine in the fridge.
Firstly, it takes a longtime to chill down a bottle of wine in the fridge. Secondly, the enclosed space and mixed odors in the fridge will have a detrimental effect on wine. What’s more, the behaviors that people open and close the refrigerator door will cause fluctuations in temperature. That will affect the quality of wine.
Nowadays, using ice bucket to chill the wine has become a popular and recognized way. So, what role can the ice bucket play? And what kind of wine is suitable for chilling?
The ice bucket is used to chill the wine that need to be tasted in a cold state. When the wine is above the optimum drinking temperature, the ice bucket can bring the wine down to the optimum temperature within a few minutes. There are lots of wines suitable for drinking after chilling down, including Sparking wine(such as Champagne), sweet wine, white wine and red wine.
People always misunderstand the usage of ice bucket. Whether in restaurants or at banquets, lots of people put wine directly in the ice bucket filled with ice. In fact, this approach does not play a good ice-cold effect. So how to use the Ice bucket correctly? There are two useful ways to use the ice bucket as follows.
If you only use ice to chill the wine, the air will act as heat insulation. That will slow down the transfer of heat from the wine to the ice. However, the mixture of ice and water can absorb the heat of the wine more efficiently. This has the effect of chilling the wine quickly.
This correct way is to add an appropriate ratio of mixture of ice and water. At first, put a certain amount of ice in the bucket. Then, add the same amount of water to the bucket, the ratio of ice to water is 1 : 1. The mixture of ice and water should occupy three-quarters of the capacity of the ice bucket. After that, put the wine in the ice in the ice bucket.
In the process of chilling, a transparent plastic ice bucket is very helpful. The plastic ice bucket not only can improve the ornamental of the wine, but also helps to control the amount of ice and water added. What’s more, users can observe and adjust the position of the wine in the ice bucket at any time.
In addition, there are two points to note. The first one is to keep a layer of ice about 2 cm thick at the bottom of the bucket. This approach can prevent the wine from directly touching the bottom of the ice bucket. The second point is to control the chilling time according to the characteristics of different wines. The time it takes to chill different wine is written at the end of the article.
It is extremely effective to add a certain amount of salt to the ice bucket when chilling wines. One bowl of salt can be added each gallon of water in the ice bucket. The steps are as follows. Firstly, put warm water in bowl and stir with salt to dissolve it. Then, pour the bowl of water onto the ice bucket.
The method can make the freezing point of water drop. Furthermore, the salt will absorb a amount of heat during the process of dissolving. So the method can help to cool down the wine more quickly. The salt is the best ice accelerator.
Excessively chilling the wine will affect the aromas and flavor of wine. Generally speaking, red wine has the shortest chilling time because of its full wine body. For red wine, it only need to be chilled for 3 to 5 minutes. For white wine, it takes 6 to 10 minutes because the wine body of white wine is relatively light. For sparkling wine and sweet wine, they are suitable for being chilled about 10 to 15 minutes.
If you know more about ice bucket, welcome to share with me.
