Taking wine on a picnic: chilling, carrying and serving

The short answer

Take the wine well chilled, carry it in the shade and insulated, and chill it again on site with cold water. A screwcap bottle saves you a corkscrew, unbreakable glasses or simple cups save you broken glass.

And if you are driving afterwards, plan your drinking accordingly: in Austria drivers must normally stay below 0.5 per mille, and stricter limits apply to some groups.

How cool should the wine be?

Recommendations vary by source. Wine Folly gives 3 to 7 degrees for light whites and sparkling wine, 7 to 12 degrees for rosé and fuller whites, and 12 to 15 degrees for light to medium reds. Wine Spectator gives roughly 4 to 10 degrees for whites and calls a normal fridge rather too cold for white wine.

For a picnic that means: set off a little cooler than you would serve at home, because the wine warms up outdoors anyway. Light reds can happily come along chilled. Why wine that is too cold shows little at the table is covered in our article on serving temperature.

How quickly does a bottle warm up?

We found no reliable outdoor measurements. A sensor manufacturer measured indoors: a bottle at 7.1 degrees from the fridge reached 11.4 degrees after about an hour at a room temperature of 20 degrees, and 15 degrees after about two hours.

Outdoors, sun, wind and the ground change these figures, and in the sun it goes faster. The measurement does show, though, that a bottle without cooling gets noticeably warmer within two hours.

Chilling on the go

Cool bag or cool box: they do not cool by themselves, they only keep the cold in. So pre-chill everything, add ice packs and put the bag in the shade.

Ice, water and salt: Wine Spectator recommends putting the bottle in a container of ice cubes, water and a little salt; after about 15 to 20 minutes it should be ready to drink. Water surrounds the bottle completely, ice alone leaves air gaps, and salt lowers the freezing point.

Cooling sleeves: they are pre-chilled in the freezer and pulled over the bottle. Manufacturers advertise fast chilling; we found no independent test. How well and for how long they cool depends on the model. They are mainly meant for bottles that are already cold.

A stream or lake: cooling a bottle in cold water works if it is well secured and cannot float away.

Carrying: avoid heat and light

Heat damages wine, but according to Wine Spectator there is no exact threshold. Signs of too much heat are a pushed-out cork or sticky traces on the neck. A car boot in summer is therefore not a good place.

Light can also change white wine, especially in clear glass bottles: a review paper describes a light-induced off-flavour in white wines in colourless glass. So do not leave the bottle standing in the sun.

Glasses for outdoors

Unbreakable plastic glasses work well on the go. EU rules restrict the use of bisphenol A in food-contact materials, explicitly including reusable drinking bottles and kitchenware; exceptions and transitional provisions apply. So it is worth checking the material information when buying, and we would rather not use older polycarbonate cups any more.

Outdoors too, a shape that narrows towards the top helps the aroma gather. More on glass shape is in our guide to white wine glasses.

Where do bottles and broken glass go?

Empty wine bottles go in the glass recycling bin, clear and coloured glass separately, closures in the appropriate collection bin. Broken drinking glasses, however, do not belong in glass recycling according to Austria Glas Recycling, but in residual waste.

Broken glass in a meadow is dangerous for people and animals. If you take glass along, it is best to take a small bag for breakages back home too.

What applies in Austria

We found no general ban on drinking alcohol outdoors in Austria. Some cities do have local alcohol bans, for example in Vienna at Praterstern and Franz-Jonas-Platz, in Salzburg at certain squares and times, and in parts of Graz city centre. We found no such bans for the Wachau municipalities; it is still worth looking out for signs on site.

For driving, according to oesterreich.gv.at you must normally stay below 0.5 per mille, in certain cases below 0.1 per mille, for example on a probationary licence. Cyclists are subject to the 0.8 per mille limit. Youth protection is a matter for the federal provinces: in Lower Austria, buying, possessing and drinking alcohol in public is prohibited for under-16s.

What matters when choosing accessories

Cool bag: well insulated, light-coloured, with room for ice packs or a bag of ice water.

Cooling sleeve: must enclose the whole bottle and needs time in the freezer.

Corkscrew: a simple waiter’s friend is enough, and none at all for screwcaps. Keep the original closure for opened bottles.

Glasses: unbreakable, with clear material information, dishwasher-safe and ideally with a shape that narrows towards the top.

When you do not need to buy anything

For a short outing you can wrap a well-chilled bottle in a damp cloth or newspaper and put it in the shade. We found no reliable measurements of this, but the method costs nothing.

With a screwcap you need no corkscrew. And in the Wachau there are even places where you need to bring nothing at all, such as the self-service wine fridge in a stone hut on the Tausendeimerberg in Spitz, which we write about in our autumn report.

Sources and review status

Research as of 30 October 2026. We have not tested any of the products mentioned ourselves. Temperature figures are ranges from the linked sources; the warming figures come from a single indoor measurement by a sensor manufacturer.

Legal information is based on the linked official pages and may change. Please check local ordinances on site.