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When it comes to knowing what temperature at which
to serve a wine: “Twenty minutes before dinner, you take the white
wine out of the fridge, and put the red wine in.”
This rule is intended to fix the two most common mistakes in wine
service: People tend to serve white wines too cold and red wines too
warm. Now, this is not something to wake up at 3 a.m. and worry
about, but the fact is that properly chilled wines do taste better.
White wines too warm will taste alcoholic and
flabby, while white wines too cold will be refreshing but nearly
tasteless. As for reds, keep them too warm and they will taste soft,
alcoholic and even vinegary. Too cold and they will have an overly
tannic bite and much less flavor.
Champagne and other sparkling wines should
start out totally chilled. Put them in the refrigerator an hour and
half before serving or in an ice bucket with an ice-water mixture at
least 20 minutes before serving. For vintage-dated Champagne and
other high-quality bubbly, however, you should let the bottle then
warm up a bit if you don’t want to miss out on the mature character
for which you’re probably paying extra.
Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, white Zinfandel and other
refreshing white wines should also be chilled to refrigerator
temperature (usually 35 to 40 degrees) for an hour and a half before
serving. But the better examples, such as barrel-aged wines like
Fume Blanc (made from Sauvignon Blanc grapes) will improve if
brought out 20 minutes early or allowed to warm up slightly during
hors d’ouevres or dinner.
Chardonnay, white Burgundy and other rich, full-bodied and
barrel-fermented white wines of high quality taste their best at
classic “cellar temperature,” or 55 degrees. Winemakers in France’s
Burgundy region know what they’re doing when they offer tastes to
visiting journalists and wine buyers directly from the barrels of
Chardonnay in their cool, humid underground cellars. So put these
into the fridge an hour and half before serving, but bring them out
20 minutes early to warm a bit.
Sweet dessert wines need the same treatment as Sauvignon
Blanc, above, with the exception of fortified dessert wines like
Port and sweet Sherry, which are better at cellar temperature or
warmer. Treat dry Sherry like Sauvignon Blanc, too.
Almost all red wines show their best stuff when served at
about 65 degrees—cool, but warmer than cellar temperature. This is
not room temperature, unless you happen to live in a Scottish castle
or in San Francisco during July. So if you don’t keep your red wine
in a cool cellar or cooled storage unit, you will enjoy it more if
you chill it for 20 minutes in the refrigerator before serving.
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