How to make bad white wine drinkable

We’ve all been there before, we’re hanging out in the sunshine with friends, and the only thing that would make the day better would be a delicious glass of white wine. The only problem is that for whatever reason, the bottle of white you’ve just opened isn’t very good – maybe it was left at your house the last time you had a party, or you grabbed it in a moment of desperation while filling up your tank at the gas station. Whatever the reason, it’s bad. While you’d normally simply open a different bottle, you don’t have one on hand and, after all, who likes to waste wine? So what do you do?

Get that wine super cold, as cold as The Rockies – why do you think that’s how they always tell you to serve Coors Light? While over-chilling a wine is not something that’s ever recommended when it comes to normally enjoying white wine – or red for that matter – over-chilling the wine here is going to be your go-to method for making the wine palatable.

This is because when a wine is super frigid all of its flavors shut down, causing the wine to become muted with none of its fruit or acidity present. This is a terrible thing if you actually want to experience those flavors, but when you have a wine where there is astringency in place of acidity or unbalanced fruit or too much wood that tastes like licking a tree trunk, a very cold wine is the only solution to your problem.

Get the latest in beer, wine, and cocktail culture sent straight to your inbox.

The best strategy for getting the wine down to the frigid temperature you require is by dunking the bottle in a bucket filled with ice water and letting the bottle sit for at least 30 minutes. That should be all the time you need to effectively chill the bottle and mute the flavors. After popping the cork and pouring that first glass, keep the bottle in the bucket so that the rest of the wine stays cold. If it starts to warm up, those unpleasant flavors you weren’t a fan of are going to start to emerge and no one wants that!

By using this method you’ll wind up with a wine that’s refreshing and drinkable, perfect for a hot summer’s day. And if for some reason you still don’t enjoy it, you can always make Sangria.