previous posts
- Frozen Dog Turd
- A Lung Full of Air
- The Big Bitter
- Meatball Marinara
- Back to the 1980s
- The Case of the Mystery Bottle
- Bubblegum
- Quantitative Beesing
- Hula Heat
- Pipe and Sippers
- Sugar Rush
- 'loadsamoney'
- Green Glowing Goo
- Off With Their Heads
- The Milk of Human Kindness
Links to Other Blogs/Sites
- Jack Keller's Wine Blog
- Wine Wire
- Sour Grapes
- Vinography
- Jamie Goode's Wine Blog
- The Pour
- Spittoon
- Basic Juice
- Fermentation
- Winehiker Witiculture
- Wein-Plus
- 365corks.com
- Complete Wine Course
- morethanorganic.com
- Vivi's Wine Journal
- Nat Decants Free E-Newsletter
- London Restaurants - Square Meal
- Lloyd Morgan
- Classic Wines
- Guardian food blog
- allaboutyou.com
- Little House Wine
- The Italian Wine Blog - Wine 90
- Berrys' Wine Blog
- redwine.co.uk
- Martin's in La La Land
- These Glory Days
- Wine Wire
- Cambridge Guide
RSS Feed| June 01, 2009 |
|
It has been incredibly hot the last few days which has meant lots of barbeques. Friends are more likely to bring white wine or rose which often needs to be chilled quickly, or else you will find ice cubes floating in your wine, a terrible state of affairs. Like most of my friends, for a super fast chill I have been putting wine bottles into the frozen wastelands of my freezer amongst the prehistoric Vienetta, frozen peas, vodka and not forgetting the bolognese mix that I thought I would use a week or so later, about 10 years ago. I normally have to find an ice axe and crampons before attempting this. As you can see my freezer has a serious short term memory problem and the wine usually ends up as a real alcopop, discovered at the next party when more friends arrive with more bottles to chill. If you are interested in how temperature affects alcohol read my old post here . The freezer is wholly inadequate and does not seem to do the job quickly enough. I have recently discovered that the best way to cool wine in just 20 minutes or so is to submerge the bottle in a bucket of water with ice, and add a couple of spoons of rock salt. Hey presto perfectly chilled wine. Those beautiful reassuring drops of condensation form on the side of your glass, like the wine is doing all the sweating for you under the heat of the sun, and every sip imparts flavour while cooling you from within. At this point you may well wonder why there was a need to add salt to the bucket of ice and water. Doesn't it just lower the freezing temperature of water (as in road treatment in the winter) and not actually decrease the temperature of the solution? Well the salt does actually have the effect of reducing the temperature. It lowers the water's freezing point and the ice starts to melt. The energy to melt the ice has to come from somewhere, and it is supplied by the heat in the surrounding water solution, hence a temperature reduction. Old fashioned ice cream makers used to work in this way, and you can in theory achieve temperatures down to -21 degrees C. So my Vienetta, while old, is not so useless after all and has locked within a deep understanding of this process in every ice crystal of its being. Remember that most white wines should be served between 7 and 10 degrees C, so do not get carried away, or you may as well be drinking very cold water, the subtle aromas of the wine lost in the chill. Have your say |