Fastest way to chill wine.

[illsley]

Please settle a dispute. Is the fastest way to chill a bottle of white wine a) putting it in the freezer b) in an ice bucket full of ice and water? I would appreciate the scientific explanation please!

[rekstout]

From experience it would be option b.

Air is a notorious insulator so although your freezer is at -20C and your ice-bucket is at around 0C, the water surrounding the bottle in the bucket will conduct heat away faster than the still air around the bottle in the freezer. I'm not a physicist but that sound like a plausible explanation to me.

[Cetti]

When needs must we have been known to put white wine in the freezer for a short time. Not scientific and any wine buff would surely throw a wobbly - but it works!

[philpot]

stick a few ice cubes in a glass and pour over the warm wine. hmmm delicious.

[William]

Option b. You can apparently make this even faster by adding salt to the ice and water. The ice will melt as the salt dissolves but the salt solution will be colder than the original ice/water mix. Something to do with enthalpy and phase changes I think. Be careful not to get salty water in your wine though.

[rja211077]

you can get those jackets filled with some sort of gel that you store in the freezer and then wrap the bottle in and it's at drinking temperature in 5 minutes. i don't have one myself but seems like a good idea to me. i think VacuVin do one. www.vacuvin.nl

[lynprestwood]

Well I'm sure that wine can be chilled in any of those ways but I heard a brilliant way to cool a can of beer which would surely work for wine too - put the can of beer in a hessian bag on a couple of feet of string, pour some petrol over the hessian and then whizz it in circles around your head for a minute or two until the petrol evaporates cooling the beer. I'd love to know if this works if anyone would like to have a go!