How long for wine to reach the right temperature?

Temperatures must all be entered in the same unit, e.g. Centigrade or Fahrenheit

Wine bottle size…

Bottle environment…

Initial temperature of wine…°C/F

Desired temperature…°C/F

Ambient temperature…°C/F

If you want to get a bottle of wine to the right temperature by leaving it at room temperature for a while, putting it in warm water or an ice bucket, or into a fridge or freezer, you can use this interactive webpage to find out how long you need to leave the bottle there. For easy future reference, why not bookmark this page, or put a link on your smartphone or tablet home screen?

The method used is due to Gyllensköld[1], as described in Peynaud’s book The Taste of Wine. If you use the “Water” environment for the calculation, it is assumed that the part of the bottle containing wine is entirely immersed in water. For wine coolers with ice, adding that amount of water has the advantage of cooling very efficiently; buckets of ice with little or no water will be a lot slower. I should also point out that the equations used here were derived from look-up charts that are rather coarsely drawn, so there might be small differences from what Gyllensköld intended. The calculated time should anyway only be treated only as a guideline. That particularly applies to any times much greater than 300 mins in air, or 25 mins in water, as they lie beyond the limits of the charts.

I have not checked the calculations against real life, but I am confident they correctly represent Gyllensköld as reported in Peynaud’s book. If however you come across any problems, please let me know.

[1] Gyllensköld H, 1967. Att temperara vin. A booklet published by Wahlström and Widstrand, Stockholm.