Wine geeks have a reputation for being
fussy and pedantic. Visit a wine discussion forum on the internet and
you may well find the participants agonizing over the temperature
control on their wine cabinets and cellars -- should it be 55°F, or
is that just a little too cold? Perhaps 60°F? No that's too hot, so
maybe 58°F is better. But how do I know how accurate my temperature
control really is? Get a life.
But some of the myriad concerns of wine lovers really are
justified. And one of the key issues in wine appreciation is one that
is rarely discussed -- serving temperature. Several years ago I
received an unusual Christmas gift: a dedicated wine thermometer, in a
wooden display case, embossed on the inside with the ideal serving
temperature for each style of French wine. How fussy, I thought. Since
then I've changed my mind. I now think that serving temperature is one
of the critical elements in appreciating a wine, and just as fine
wines can be totally ruined by use of the wrong glasses serving wine
at the wrong temperature can absolutely kill it.
Scientific research has shown that tatse buds function differently
with changing temperature. For example, the perception of sweetness in
a solution is strongly affected by the temperature of that solution.
(It tastes sweeter as it warms up.) But we don't need hard data to
convince us of this. Try the following experiment. Take an inexpensive
oaked Australian Chardonnay and pour it into two half bottles. Leave
one of these at room temperature, and chill the other down to fridge
temperature. Then taste the two wines. The wine at room temperature
may well taste a bit flabby, sweet and confected, but the chilled
bottle is likely to be much more savoury, leaner and with more
'structure'. Try the same experiment with a sweet wine, and you'll
probably find that the wine at room temperature tastes sweeter and
less focused than the chilled version.
The conclusion? Chilling white wines generally makes them taste
less sweet and more savoury, and generally makes them taste 'less'
overall. In fact the worst white wine I ever had, a papaya wine in
Kenya which had a delicate bouquet of feline urine, was almost
palatable when served ice cold. You had to drink it quick, though,
before it had a chance to warm up. On the other hand, chill a fine
Burgundy or Alsace white too much, and you'll miss what the wine has
to offer.
With red wines, a similar thing happens, but here it has more to do
with tannins than sweetness. Whereas white wines get their structure
from their acidity, reds rely on a combination of acidity and the
bitter group of compounds known as tannins for their substance. If you
chill a red wine, this exaggerates the tannins, gives the wine more
structure, and makes it less expressive on the nose. Conversely, as a
red warms up, the tannins become less apparent and the wine becomes
more volatile. While intuitively you'd think that it's therefore a
good idea to warm reds up to make them more expressive on the nose,
what actually happens is that as a red is overheated, the nose loses
its focus: there's quite a narrow window of temperatures where a wine
shows well, and it's not a good idea to stray outside this. One
non-wine geek friend of mine has a dreadful habit of opening red wines
a couple of hours early and sticking them on top of the oven. By the
time the wine is poured, it's lukewarm; almost undrinkably so. Don't
do it!
Our home has an ageing central heating system, and on a cold
winter's evening, I often find red wines at room temperature are just
too cold to be enjoyable. They are muted on the nose and sternly
structured. In the summer, however, I'll often pop reds in the fridge
for 20 minutes before opening them, as at a room temperature of
25°C-plus they can be unfocused and blowsy. And some light reds, such
as those from Beaujolais or the Loire, often benefit from being
chilled right down much as you might do with a white wine.
So, you've probably gathered by now that I'm fully convinced that
serving temperature has a startling effect on the taste of a wine.
While you don't have to get it accurate within a fraction of a degree,
it's worth paying attention to. In general, watch out for serving red
wines too warm; it's much easier to warm a wine up in the glass than
it is to cool it down again, so err on the side of too cool. And don't
serve those reds too warm!