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The question

I like my wine served cool and to stay cool, both white and red. What if I froze some of my wine in large ice cubes and used these cubes to keep my drink cool without watering it down. Am I crazy?

The answer

Crazy? Genius is more like it. You've come up with a cool solution to an age-old problem, the warm-wine blues.

Wine preserves well when frozen, reaching a state of suspended animation. Like most foodstuffs, it will survive more or less intact for a much longer period than, say, in the fridge. Some people have been known to preserve leftover wine the same way for use in cooking, stuffing a tray-full of cubes into plastic freezer bags.

It would be wise to use the same wine for the cubes as the liquid you intend to enjoy. This would better preserve the flavour's integrity. But you could also simply opt for a similarly styled wine – say, one frozen Chianti for another brand of fresh Chianti. Or you could mix and match if the experimental mood strikes, plopping a red cube into, say, a glass of cheap pinot grigio to create an evolving rosé that gets darker as the ice melts. No harm in that as long as you're willing to suffer through the occasional stylistic blunder.

Most important of all, don't let those cubes linger long enough to acquire freezer burn or fall prey to unwanted odours from that poorly wrapped bundle of pork ribs.

The Flavour Principle by Lucy Waverman and Beppi Crosariol recently took home top prize for best general English cookbook at the Taste Canada Food Writing Awards. Published by HarperCollins.

E-mail your wine and spirits questions to Beppi Crosariol. Look for answers to select questions to appear in the Wine & Spirits newsletter and on The Globe and Mail website.

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