It’s the time of the year when many wine drinkers revert to white wines and cut back on red wine until there is frost in the air again. Don’t get me wrong, I fully support the enjoyment of white wines. So often they get written off as not having enough complexity or depth, when in fact there are many interesting white wines from throughout the world that excel at being a great pairing with food or fantastic on their own.
Now back to those reds. I just finished reading an article on this very subject in the NY Times entitled “Reds on Ice? It’s not Heresy” that reminded me of how red wine doesn’t always get its just due in winter or summer because of its serving temperature. The point of the article is that are many red wines that taste great chilled and are very refreshing in the summer months. It emphasizes that when chilling red wines, you’ll have greater enjoyment if they are lighter fruitier wines like Beaujolais and Italian Barbera, or a nice Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley. I completely agree; however, it brings me back to a personal pet peeve that most red wine is served too warm throughout the year.
This reminds me of a talk I heard by Anthony Giglio, a wine writer from New York, at the Aspen Food and Wine Classic several years back. He was incensed at going to top restaurants and paying top dollar for wine and that was served too warm!
So he proceeded to visit the top restaurants in New York City, all with names that started with “The” or “La”, with his handy dandy thermometer in tow. Bottom line, each restaurant that served red wine above 68 degrees was included in his article on this very topic. To further exemplify this point and how red wine should be served, he did a wine demonstration at a large party where quite a few wine aficionados were in attendance. Basically, each person was given 3 red wines to sip and told to respond to what they liked. Most everyone liked #3 the best. What they didn’t know was that it
was the same wine in all 3 glasses. The 1st glass was at room temperature (72 degrees), the 2nd glass
was from a bottle that had been on ice for 5 minutes, and the wine in glass #3 had been on ice for 15 minutes. Needless to say, there were a few folks that felt tricked by thinking it was 3 different wines, but I’m sure no one will forgot it; I certainly haven’t.
Giglio also points out that, of course, you don’t ever want to serve any wine, white or red too cold because it will lose most of its aromatics. Don’t fall for the opposite: the typical temperature we drink red wine at, 72 degrees, is just too warm!
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