To Chill or not to Chill?
My thesis is that there is no “best” temperature to serve wine. One expert I know thinks the best temperature to serve red wine is 62 degrees F. Martin Ray, a famous California winemaker of the past, liked his Cabernet best at 81 degrees!
The legendary Andre Tchelistcheff of B.V. Private Reserve fame (winemaker from 1938-1972) came to Houston in 1979 for a vertical B.V. Private Reserve Cabernet tasting that I organized. The wines were taken to the wine cellar at the Petroleum Club the day before. The temperature was 65 degrees then and at the tasting the next day. Andre later told me that he thought the wines were a little too cold and could not show their best at that temperature.
I’ve always preferred lighter, fruitier wines like Beaujolais at 60 to 65 degrees. The lower temperature seems to enhance the flavors and coax an additional bit of charm. But I’m in Andre’s camp when it comes to the big reds. Some of the greatest I’ve had were served at top-end restaurant temperature (about 70 degrees), even though I prefer them several degrees cooler. In fact, serving them at 65 or even 62 is fine with me if the ambient temperature is around 70 degrees. That way, one can observe how the wine evolves as it warms up in the glass. When I do this however, the wine usually doesn’t stay in the glass at any one temperature long enough for me to see this evolution!
So how do you chill a 70 degree wine down to 67 or 68 degrees? The answer is simple. Don’t. I think manipulating a great red wine by putting a great 70 degree red wine in the refrigerator for 15 or 20 minutes is contraindicated. Now, if it’s cooler outside, I’ll stand a bottle in the shade for an hour or two. And if you have a wine cellar, you can test different times to serve the wine after taking it from the cellar. Once I opened two special reds—a ’92 Maya and a ’90 Chateau Montrose (both Parker 100s)—just after removing them from my 58 degree cellar, and poured them into glasses about an hour prior to drinking them. For dinner parties, we lower the AC to just under 70 degrees. The wines were perfect!
If picnicking in hot or even warm weather, most take a chilled white or chilled rose`. If taking a really good red, it won’t taste good warm, so this would be an occasion in which I would put it in some sort of cooler.
With regard to white wines, the worse the wine, the colder the better, so as to hide the faults! The better whites, such as great white Burgundies, do not open up and show their greatness if chilled too much.
Some connoisseurs even prefer them at cellar temperature, i.e., around 55 degrees. I prefer them at around 45 degrees—although I’m not a stickler about it—and enjoy seeing what happens to the wine as it warms up in the glass.
The point of all this is that there is no “best” temperature to serve wines. Different individuals prefer different temperatures. I knew one connoisseur who served even the best whites right out of the refrigerator—around 37 degrees—because that’s the way he liked them. And all of this advice is tempered by the fact that usually, a white right out of the fridge, and a red at regular room temperature (around 72 degrees) will work just fine!
I’ve always said that your palate is the best palate in the world for you. Although there are some general rules and guidelines for temperature, nobody can tell you what’s best for you.
