Wine Too Hot or Too Cold?

Several of my wine friends recently returned from trips to Italy. Most were on separate trips and all of them sounded like they had a great time. One was recounting their journey through Tuscany and brought up the temperature of some red wine that they were served…and how cold it was. “Is that normal?”

No.  9.9 times out of 10 I get that question posed in the opposite way: “How cold should [that] wine be?”

“Red wines should be room temperature, right?”

I have preached the Sermon of Wine Temperature from my swirling pulpit for quite a while; Almost all red wines should served between 65-68 degrees Fahrenheit (18-20 Celsius). That “Room temperature” is the temperature of a bottle coming out of a wine cellar. Most wine cellars are around 60 degrees. The bottle is brought out and opened, allowing for some aeration as the temperature raises to around 65 degrees or so. Then the wine is poured into a glass that is close to the temperature of the room you are actually in, probably around 75 degrees, or even higher if you have been holding that glass for a while. Hopefully you see where this is going.

We, especially along the Gulf Coast, have a chronic problem of serving red while too hot!  When red wine is poured into your glass then the glass should feel cool to the touch, not cold, with NO condensation. If the outside of your glass starts to condense with water, then your wine is too cold! White wine SHOULD cause your glass to form condensation, assuming you are in a similar climate to that on the Gulf Coast.

It is okay to put your bottle of red wine in the fridge.  Assuming your bottle of red is around 75 degrees you can put it in for a short time, 30 or so minutes, opened, and it will be ready to drink almost immediately upon exit. Or, if you leave the bottle of red in for longer, with your whites, then it will just take longer outside of the fridge to be ready.  Wine is served wrong either because of ignorance, laziness, or a combination of both.  Don’t let that describe you.

I had the chance to go to two of our local wine events this past week: a tasting at Beyond the Grape that was supporting the Pensacola Opera, and the monthly tasting of our local chapter of the American Wine Society. Beyond the Grape featured a fun full tour of Italy with some fantastic charcuterie boards and the AWS chapter taught a class on Spain, followed by an awesome Paella! The Crowd Favorite at Beyond the Grape was a fascinating Cabernet Franc from Umbria (Paolo e Noemia d’Amico Atlante), and there was a Wine of Note at the AWS tasting, Pazo La Moreira Albariño.

Other than the white wines, ALL of the red wines, at both events, were served too hot!  There are very few rules in Wine…but; Rule #1, don’t serve hot wine!  Temperature matters.  Wine served at the wrong temperature makes it taste worse no matter how good that wine was supposed to be, and life is too short to waste it on bad wine.

Beyond the Grape’s Recent Finds tasting

Yet another week with multiple similar reactions. When people find out how many GOOD wine tastings we have locally I get the same reaction, over and over; “Oh my gosh, I had no idea!”Most of the local wine events are, or near, downtown. One notable exception is Beyond the Grape (BTG), located in Cordova Mall. I don’t count the wine events held at the big box stores. While the big box stores have some good events, supporting our local businesses is a big part of GCW.Not only did BTG, with Terrior Wines, put on a great tasting with good wines, but the charcuterie board, put together by Olive to Nosh, was AMAZING!Picking affordable wines that have the potential to please a wide variety of people is VERY hard! A tried and true way to take your wine tasting up to the next level is a good charcuterie board. But make no mistake, it will not cover up a selection of bad wine.So cudos to BTG, Terrior, and Olive to Nosh for putting together a great wine tasting in the Cordova area! Yet another reason why we get so many reactions-of-amazement when people find out how amazing our local wine scene is!