How to keep your wine cold at summer picnics, barbeques

Heat is the enemy of wine, and not just because wine won't develop well over the years if your storage area is overheated. If you serve wine that is too warm, its fruit flavors will be muted and it could taste dull and alcoholic.

Here are some hints for keeping wine cool during hot summer patio parties or picnics:

Start with cold wines. For larger parties, put already-chilled bottles in a large cooler and pour ice over them. There's no need to add water (or salt, which speeds temperature change by helping to melt the ice), because the warm temperature outdoors will begin to melt the ice soon enough. Wine Enthusiast.com sells a portable, collapsible cooler for travel and picnics ($50).

Don't be shy about chilling your red wines, too. You won't want them as cold as your whites, but they will not taste good at "room temperature" when that means 80 degrees.

For more intimate picnics, consider an insulated wine tote cooler, such as the Picnic at Ascot Two Bottle Insulated Wine Tote (Amazon.com, $24.99), which can keep the wine chilled for several hours.

If one bottle is all you need, the makers of Vacuvin bottle stoppers also manufacture an insulated sleeve called the Rapid Ice Instant Wine Chiller (WineEnthusiast.com, $10) that you can keep in the freezer. It is designed to chill a bottle of white wine from room temperature to drinking temperature in about 10 minutes. If your wine is already chilled, the sleeve will keep it cold on your patio until you empty the bottle.