Whats Really The Right Temperature To Serve Wine?

Many times in my wine courses, students will ask whats the proper temperature to serve wine? The best answer is whatever temperature you like. The particular answer is like all things in wine, it’s only subjective. But lets have a look at some suggestions below which will help you to get started.

Sometimes during a wine class, someone will believe that I am serving wine that’s too warm. I dig a little deeper and find that they are used to drinking their wine straight from the refrigerator. The issue with that’s that most refrigerators are set to about 40 degrees.

That’s great for beer or sodas, 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 aromas that are so important to wine tasting. If it’s too warm, it simply isn’t 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 scents and finally the taste to be at their maximum. OK, if this is the proper temperature, the best way to I get my wine to 55?

The only solution is to get a home wine chiller. They’re sometimes available any place where electronics are sold. Units range in price but in a number of cases can be as low as $100. An excellent investment for when you become a regular wine drinker.

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

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

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

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

I believe the ideal temperature for red is about 64 or 65 degrees. Heresy you are saying! What, I assumed reds were supposed to be a room temperature. Well, yes and no. It actually relies on what you standard of room temperature is. If you think back a few hundred years when wine was controlled by the French, the standard trendsetter was some form of royal who lived in a large chateau with 2 foot thick stone walls.

Think of the times you have walked through buildings like that. They are truly cold. Room temperature two hundred years back and before central boiler system was probably in the low to mid 60′s. Not the 72 most folks think about today. So through the years, people recollected the room temperature part, but forgot that room temperature is different from era to era.

So that the result is 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 freezer should do the job

If you like your wine at 72, by every means drink it at 72. But I’d also encourage you to try your wine with a slight chill and see which one you like best. Remember, drink what you like and how you’re keen on it. The wine serving temperature is your decision.

Mark is a professional winemaker, former winery owner, writer and frequent speaker on wine. He now helps folk learn about wine by teaching wine classes through the US.