You select your wine based on specific criteria red or white, Australia or Napa, high or low acid, we even focus on the glass to serve it in (maybe Reidel wine glasses are onto something).  You may be storing your wine in your wine cellar, a wine chiller or a Vinotheque cabinet, so you care about the quality of the wine and want to get the most out of it.  One missing treatment of your wine for optimum taste is serving temperature and that is more important and more complex than red is served warmer than white.

Storing or serving Temperature can make or break a good bottle of wine.  Let’s discuss a little about the serving temperatures.

Different Wines Deserve Different Temperatures

The serving temperature for wine needs to be set to enhance the best attributes of the wine.  As you can see the best temperature depends on the wine, the variety of grape(s) used and some agree that the where the grapes are from.

In general wines such as Tokay, Berenauslese and other dessert wines should be served at 43˚ F; (the blancs)Chenin Blancs, Savignon Blancs Loire, Rieslings and table wine Chardonnays at 45˚F any colder and the flavors are too minimized.   High quality white wines such as Sauternes as well as lighter red wines like Beaujolais work best at 50˚ F. Medeira wine should be served at 55˚ F and Zinfandels can be between 59-60˚ F. Then the reds including Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Bordeaux, Shiraz and Phones should be served at 60˚ F.

Many people understand that reds need to be served at room temperature, but the real serving temperature that is being referred to here is wine cellar rom temperature, and that is at about 55˚ F.  This means right from the cellar to the table is fine.  There is alcohol in the red wine that will give an unpleasant bite when served at higher than 55˚ or at room temperature.

When you start paying attention to some of the items that can enhance your wine you can experience your wine in a whole different way. Cheers!

If you need help with temperature, contact Cold Craft, Inc.

408.374.7292 or [email protected]