Wine serving temperatures are the topic of this installment of our wine guide…
Your refrigerator at home maintains a temperature of close to 5 degrees, and this is too cold for most white wines. Dry white wines and Champagne of a high quality should be served at a temperature of around 7 degrees and 10 degress , which is close to the temperature of a regular underground cellar. White wines should ideally be served from a cellar but, an hour or so in a fridge is better than acceptable. Inexpensive white wines, cheaper sparkling wines and sweet white wines are best a bit colder, possibly 3 degrees to 9 degrees, so two hours or so should bring these bottles down to an ideal temperature.
As with white wines, red wines also need to be chilled. Today’s centrally heated houses are too warm for red wines to be served at ‘room temperature’. The ideal serving temperature for many fine red wines is maybe 14 degrees to 17 degrees, considerably cooler than modern houses, although this was a common temperature indoors in centuries gone by. Therefore, many reds, unless stored somewhere cool, will benefit from half an hour in the refrigerator.
If not done with care, wine can be damaged when it’s temperature is changed. Gentle cooling in the fridge is best, with cooling in a bucket of water and ice also being a good option. Doing so will bring the wine down to 0 degrees, which is far too cold to appreciate the wine, so you’ll need to remove the bottle before it gets that cold. The risk of damaging wine is more significant when trying too warm a bottle that is too cool. Warm the wine gently, ideally by looking ahead and bringing the wine from its cool storage area (whether it be a cellar or a fridge) several hours earlier.
Always err on the side of caution if you’re not sure about wine serving temperatures; going for too cold rather than too warm. Wines served in this way will soon warm up in the glass, maybe even releasing pleasant aromas as it does so.
Want to know more about wine? Take a look at our free guide: Wine 101