A confession

I bought it half-expecting a gimmick. Two hours into dinner, the wine was still cold.

Quarter past seven, the first glass of white. The bottle stays on the table, because that is where everyone is. By the second pour it has gone soft, and the friend on my left sets her glass down half finished. You cannot un-open a bottle — and the drawer under my coffee maker is already a graveyard of things I bought to fix exactly this.

Electric corkscrew. Used twice.

One question I judge everything by now

Did it do more than I counted on? Not on the first night — on the second glass, the second evening, a month later.

• The ice bucketdoes exactly what it promises, and leaves a wet ring on the table
• The fridge relaythe bottle spends half the evening in another room
• The neoprene sleevenever frozen on the night I actually need it
• Ice in the glassreaches the wine and thins it
• The freezer sprintfine, right up until you forget the bottle is in there

The bucket wasn’t a mistake. It did exactly what it said it would do — that was the whole problem.

Everything in that drawer was precisely as good as it looked. Nothing was ever more.

Why the least impressive thing on the table is the one that works

Cold from the outside has to cross the glass before it ever reaches the wine. That is why the bucket and the fridge never turn out better than they look — they work at the wrong end of the problem. Cold that starts inside the wine has no distance to travel.

Which is why the plainest object on the table is the one doing the work, and why it did more than I paid for it to do.

The Lindner & Co Wine Cooling Stick: a rod of 304 food-grade stainless steel. About an hour in the freezer. Into a bottle you have already opened, it brings the wine to serving temperature in 10 to 15 minutes and holds it there for up to three hours. The built-in spout aerates the wine as you pour, drip-free.

Three things I do now

1. It lives in the freezer door. About an hour the first time; after that it is simply there.
2. Into the bottle I have already opened. I pour a glass first to make room.
3. Pour through the spout. This is the part that surprised me most — it airs the wine on the way into the glass.

Nothing to charge, nothing to replace, dishwasher safe.

The one thing I didn’t buy it for.

What I still doubted

Halfway through dinner the friend on my left picked up the bottle and asked what the metal thing in the neck was — the second kit went home with her.

Other people who didn’t expect much

4.7/5 · 1,422 reviews

Started out sceptical, but now I don't want to be without it.

It sat in my freezer for weeks .....only used it for the first time yesterday. Pleasantly surprised, very happy