Sorry movie buffs, this is not a post regarding Kevin Bacon (although he is fabulous). Rather, this is a post about the number one reason Americans are made fun of. Okay, so besides fanny packs, tube socks, the mullet, Cheesecake Factory sized eating habits and Vanilla Ice. As if all of that wasn't bad enough, we are also notorious for drinking our white wines too cold and our red wines too warm. Living in the desert where average temperatures hover between 100 degrees and the blazing inferno that is hell, the too cold part is almost forgivable. I've long said that I'd rather have my wines too cold than too warm as it's much easier, certainly round these parts, to go up in temperature than down. That being said, there really should only be a 10 degree difference between white wine and red wine. To put a finer point on it, your whites should be about 52 to 55 degrees. Logic would then dictate that the reds should be around 65 degrees.
Usually this concept will evade at least one or two people per tasting I host. Inevitably, I'll hear "This red wine is a little chilled. You're not supposed to chill red wine... are you?" Or my personal favorite - "My wife and I prefer our reds at room temperature. Can you heat these up for us?" No sir, I cannot.
There is method to the madness people. We don't drink anything at the ambient 80 degree temperature at which most red wine is served. Nothing. Hot beverages are meant to be hot... 120 degrees hot. How many cups of coffee have been frustratingly returned to a waitress because they weren't hot enough? Having been a waitress for too many years to remember, I can tell you - it's a nauseating amount. We have this thing called "room temperature" stuck in our brains and we hold tight to it like the gospel. I honestly think that we are so afraid of looking like wine novices, knowing how déclassé it is to put ice in our glass of Cab, that we've convinced ourselves that warm wine is the way to go. I feel obligated to remind folks that "room temperature" was, once upon a time, called "cellar temperature".
In the words of Sophia Petrillo - "Picture it... France, 1725. An old chateau that has already been producing wines for one hundred years. A fair maiden ventures into the depths of the chateau cellar to retrieve a bottle of wine for her master’s dinner. She gets to the bottom of the spiral staircase when, alas, she realizes she has forgotten her fur coat and freezes to death." What's the point you ask? The point is that cellar temperature is not room temperature, and room temperature was never meant to be a wine's ideal setting in Palm Springs in August.
The too cold part of this equation means you are muting the delicate aromas that can only be perceived when a wine warms a bit. When a white is served ice cold, sure, it's refreshing, but it just tastes cold. Forget about smelling the nuances of honeydew melon, jasmine, or lychee nut. With red wines this is where things get a bit trickier. Too warm creates far more problems for a wine than just squashing its aromas. Every flaw is exacerbated. The wine begins to live under a microscope, each taste being a painful reminder of a bad vintage, an unskilled winemaker, or worse... both. All you begin to taste is the heat of rubbing alcohol and the sour bitterness of unripe fruit. Chilling a wine makes an inexpensive bottle far more forgiving and a pricy bottle far more enjoyable.
If you get one thing form this post I hope it's this... do not, under any circumstances, feel embarrassed to ask for an ice bucket to chill down a warm bottle of red wine. I do it all the time. A bottle of wine sitting on a back bar, next to the steam inducing espresso machine and whirling glass washer, is not going to taste the way it should (unless they are keeping that restaurant at sixty degrees, in which case you can't afford to eat there anyway). Now, you may be wondering “So, is it bad to put ice in the glass?” In a word, yes. If you’re serious about the wine you’re drinking, and have paid more than $1.99 for the bottle, you will want to refrain from watering it down. Trace elements in the water supply can also change the dynamics of the wine.
Which leads me into my next topic…
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