Why not put an ice cube in your glass of wine to cool it down a bit?
Who hasn’t been tempted to put an ice cube in a glass of wine on a hot, sunny day? And on the terrace with a glass of rosé? It’s even a fairly common thing when you stroll through the streets of busy cities in good weather: wine glasses regularly have a few pieces of ice.
Some Anglo-Saxon catering professionals even regularly defend this practice. As recalled by The Telegraph, the starred American chef David Chang, two stars in the Michelin guide, admitted very recently in his podcast that he occasionally puts ice cubes in his wine, even speaking of a “taste like gold” (a taste of gold). Ice in the glass has even become trendy, so much so that musician Alex James, the Blur bassist turned farmer, has launched a new sparkling wine called “Britpop,” which he recommends being served “with ice when the sky is really sunny.”
A few years ago, Moët
So putting an ice cube or two in your wine, if you consume it in moderation obviously, is it acceptable or even desirable or is it an unforgivable sacrilege as many wine lovers repeat? In reality, any sommelier who loves his job and any oenologist will tell you the same thing: if you like wine, that is to say if you appreciate discovering the proposal of a winemaker, drink the wine without ice.
For what ? For technical reasons: ice dilutes wine or champagne. It dilutes the alcohol, the acidity and alters the residual sugar. In other words, all the work and choices made by the winemaker and winemaker during winemaking and aging are annihilated. And that’s a shame since that’s what makes a wine’s flavor: the concentration, the suppleness of the tannins, the acidic frame… not to mention the nose. All this was thought out in advance by the person who made the drink.
Refusing an ice cube in a glass of wine, you will have understood, it is therefore not snobbery. That said, you shouldn’t be too careful if the white wine or rosé on the table is a very cheap wine and of little interest. But one can find another cooling method like placing the bottle in a bucket of ice and water. To speed up the process, add salt to the water. This will lower the melting temperature of the ice, which can lower the water temperature below freezing, thereby cooling the wine more quickly.