• You’ve got leftover squeaks of wine after a party, and don’t know what to do with it? The portions are too small and pointless to cork, so just pour it into ice cube trays and freeze them. The next time you make pasta – voila!

• How to chill white wine quickly: Wrap the bottle in a wet kitchen towel, then put it in the freezer for 20 minutes. It’s ready to serve right after. You can test this against a bottle without the towel wrap.

• And how to keep the bottle of white wine even cooler once you’ve opened it? Put in an ice bucket (yes, you know this part, Alec) but add salt to it. Salt lowers the freezing point of ice and causes the bottle’s temperature to drop.

• Frozen grapes work as well. Drop fresh frozen grapes into your glass and the temp should drop without affecting the flavour.

• The bottle of white wine isn’t very good, for whatever reason. Get it super cold, like Fortress of Solitude cold. Over chilling the wine is the only method for making it palatable. It does of course mute some of its flavours, but it’s okay when wine is too fruity or acidic. If all else fails, use it for sangria.

• This sounds rude but… Don’t smell the cork. Expensive wines have unique inscriptions on the corks (to prevent counterfeits), so when the waiter presents the cork, it’s to honour an old tradition, not for you to whiff away. Besides, you look like a clueless wank when you do that.

• Wine is too sweet? Add a pinch of salt. Yes, table salt. Nathan Myhrvold (who authored the seminal Modernist Cuisine), took a pinch of salt and added it to his glass of Cabernet when someone said it was a tad sweet. It tasted better immediately. Before long, everyone else at the party was copying his behavior and adding a pinch of salt to their own glasses.

[ How to Cook Leftovers With Leftover Wine ]

• Three words: Decant. Decant. Decant. When the wine you just opened is a little too acidic, too tannic, or has some VA (volatile acidity, which causes wine to smell or taste like vinegar) – just decant it. Let it breath a little and taste it again, it’ll improve.

• If you’re planning on storing the remains of that bottle of wine after drinking, then recork it after every pour – don’t leave it exposed.

• Missing that wine bottle opener again? Here’s another novel way to open that bottle…

The key to it all.

• Something to consider if you don’t have a corkscrew, and you don’t want to resort to the Shoe Method: Order from an ‘under one hour’ delivery service and they’ll usually have one cockscrew available. Also, you’ll have an extra bottle on wine on hand. You can wait 59 minutes, can’t you? We recommend BottlesXO

• Freeze your leftover champagne into cubes, and use them next time you want to drink orange juice. Voila – you’ve got Mimosa.

• If at a restaurant and, between you and your date, you’re gonna be drinking two glasses each, then order the bottle. Always. It’ll be fresher, as single glass orders are poured from leftover bottles of wines.

• Rubber bands or simple bracelets can help people identify their glasses of wine your house party. That is, if you’re too cheap to spring for wine charms. Dotted stickers works too.

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