Wine coolers

Start with the height. A cooler of 19 to 22 cm fits an ordinary Bordeaux or Burgundy bottle; for magnums you need 25 cm or more, otherwise the neck sticks out so far that the top half does not chill along. A wide wine bowl of 42 to 47 cm takes four to eight bottles at once and works faster at a reception than separate buckets.

Then choose the system. A bucket with ice and water chills fastest, because water carries heat away far better than air: fill it half with ice and half with cold water, not with ice alone. A double-walled model goes into the freezer for an hour and then chills without ice, which saves you wet labels and a puddle of meltwater on the table. For sparkling wine, see the champagne coolers.

Stand the bottle upright in the cooler rather than at an angle, so the cold water reaches above the shoulder. A bottle at room temperature reaches serving temperature in a bucket of iced water in about twenty minutes; in the fridge the same takes two hours.

Lift the bottle out to pour and wipe it dry, otherwise water drips onto the table and the label. Put it straight back afterwards. If the bottle travels along a long table, a model with a stand is more practical than a loose bucket, because it does not have to sit among the plates and glasses. Whatever is left at the end of the evening you close with a wine stopper.

Stainless steel is the workhorse choice and lasts for years in the wash-up, but it condenses on the outside and marks a wooden table; put a coaster underneath. Clear plastic shows the label, which is handy if you sell wine by the bottle, and it is lighter and less prone to breakage. Copper and gold look warmer on the table, but those finishes should be washed by hand to keep the coating intact.

Always empty a cooler completely after use and dry it out. Leftover water with traces of wine turns musty within a day, and you smell it again in the next bottle.

If you want to chill and serve ice at the same time, the ice buckets are more practical than a bottle cooler. The glassware that goes with it is with the wine glasses. And for the occasions when a cooler comes to the table: the proportions for an aperol spritz and a sangria are on the recipe pages. If you work in hospitality and pour a lot of wine by the glass, it is practical to have a cooler per station instead of passing one around; that saves walking and your bottle never arrives lukewarm at the table.