Monday, July 6, 2009

Speaking of popping corks in the freezer, which I admitted to carelessly doing in my last post, there's another freezer story worth telling. And it may just inspire you to many hours of frosty enjoyment...

I used my freezer again recently, when I brought home a split of room-temperature sparkling wine that needed a jump start to get it up to drinking temperature. The bottle was Gruet Blanc de Noir, which I believe is hands-down the best sparkling wine in its price range ($18 for a 750ml), and is carefully crafted in beautiful New Mexico. We'll be sure to blog more about Gruet later.

So while the split is chilling amongst the frozen green beans and sorbet, I ran out to do an errand. And as luck would have it, I ended up spending much more time away from home than I'd planned. By the time I tore back into the kitchen, I was expecting to find the old wine-cicle leaking alcoholic ice crystals all over my frozen food.

But the Force was with me. While the top half of the bubbly looked quite frozen, no damage had been done. My husband very gingerly pried off the champagne cork, and filled our flutes with an honest-to-God champagne slushy. And it was far and away the coldest, crispest, cleanest and most delicious sparkling wine I've ever had the pleasure to drink.

So here's the moral of the story: happy accidents can produce great results. But remember that we're pushing the outside of the envelope here: leave your bottle in the freezer too long and you're cleaning frosty foam off your frozen veggies. What worked for me was:
2 hours in a standard freezer for a half (375 ml) bottle.
For a full bottle, I'd increase your freezer time maybe another hour.

If any of you have the nerve to experiment with this, please tell me how it turns out. In the meantime, I'll raise my glass of bubbly to sparkling wine lovers everywhere.

Cheers!

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