What’s The Correct Temperature To Serve Wine?

December 27th, 2011

Many times in my wine courses, somebody will ask whats the right temperature to serve wine? The real answer is whatever temperature you prefer. The particular answer is like all things in wine, it’s only subjective. But lets look at some guidelines below that will help you get started.

Sometimes in a wine class, someone will think that I am serving wine that’s too hot. I dig slightly deeper and realize that they are used to drinking their wine directly from the refrigerator. The difficulty with that’s that most refrigerators are set to about 40 degrees.

That’s excellent for beer or colas, but way to cold for wine. If a wine is too cold, it loses most of its flavor. Literally the flavour molecules slow down and you lose the scents that are so vital to wine tasting. If it’s too warm, it’s just not refreshing.

The ideal temperature for whites is about 55 degrees. At 55, it’s still cool enough to be refreshing and feel chilled, but warm enough for the aromas and ultimately the taste to be at their maximum. OK, if this is the right temperature, the proper way to I get my wine to 55?

The only solution is to get a home wine fridge. They’re customarily available anyplace where electronics are sold. Units range price-wise but in a few cases can be as low as $100. A great investment for when you become a regular wine drinker.

Another solution to serving wine at the correct temperature is to take your wine out of the key fridge and set it on the counter for about a half hour. The temperature will rise about 3-4 degrees every 10 minutes. The disadvantage is that it’s incredible hard to look at the bottle that long without drinking it.

It’s kind of like going through the drive thru, ordering fries and seeing them on the passenger’s seat and telling yourself you’re going to wait until you get home till you eat them. It isn’t humanly possible.

If you find that your wine is too cold, say in a restaurant, use body heat to your benefit. Cup your hands round the bowl of the glass for two minutes and you ought to be OK.

Champagne on the other hand is an exception the white wine temperature range. It is designed to be server a bit less warm than “still” wine. I personally like my sparkling wines to be about 45 degrees. Another reason for this is the less warm the bottle, (to a point) the lesser the CO2 expands which actually make the bottle less complicated and safer to open.

I suspect the ideal temperature for red is about 64 or 65 degrees. Blasphemy you are saying! What, I thought reds were meant to be a room temperature. Well, perhaps. It truly relies upon what you standard of room temperature is. If you think back a couple of hundred years when wine was dominated by the French, the standard trendsetter was some type of royal who lived in a huge castle with 2 foot thick stone walls.

Think of the times you have walked thru buildings like that. They’re truly cold. Room temperature two hundred years back and before central heating system was probably in the low to mid 60′s. Not the 72 most people think of today. So thru the years, folk recalled the room temperature part, but forgot that room temperature isn’t like era to era.

So that the result’s that today, we drink our reds at our room temperature, not in the low to mid sixties. About 10-15 minutes in the fridge or about 5-10 in the fridge should do the trick

If you like your wine at 72, by all possible means drink it at 72. But I would also inspire you to try your wine with a slight chill and see which 1 that you like best. Remember, drink what you like and how you love it. The wine serving temperature is up to you.

Mark is a professional winemaker, previous winery owner, author and frequent speaker on wine. He now helps folk learn about wine by teaching wine classes throughout the U. S..