Here's How to Chill Any Wine in 7 Minutes Flat

This week in "Does it work?": a trick for chilling any bottle in seven minutes. 

Don’t you know the seven-minute wine chilling trick? 

This is what my favorite wine clerk asks me, with an emoji-eseque shrug, when I request a litre of chilled rosé that she doesn't have.

Most likely because of my blank stare, she then swiftly recited the simplest, palm-to-face process that could be: Wet a bunch of paper towels (or a dish towel), wrap your warm or room temperature bottle of wine in them, and stick it in the freezer for seven minutes. 

How? Not possible—maybe? I had to try it as soon as I walked in the door. I giddly sped-walked home, ahead of my party, and immediately doused paper towels at my sink, unwadded them, and wrapped them around my bottle of wine. 

Seven minutes later, I eagerly unwrapped the half-frozen paper towels from my bottle—and well, it was a little bit cold. My theory then was that it works much better for a normal bottle of wine (750 milliliters), but a liter takes double the time—14 minutes was pretty darn drinkable.

We tried it again in the office on a regular bottle, and found it best to: a) use a dish towel and b) get it sopping wet—don't wring it out! The wine was chilled, not cold, and infinitely more enjoyable than it would have been seven minutes earlier. 

Have you tried the seven-minute trick? Did it work? If not, do you have other quick-chill techniques for wine? Tell us in the comments below.

This article originally appeared on September 21, 2015. We're re-running it because, well, it might just come in handy with all the upcoming festivities.