How Cool Is Wine?

I learned one thing in Little League that has stood me in good stead as a wine writer. It’s an essential truth and it’s yours free.

Because I could neither hit nor throw, I was installed in the outfield--way out. I would stand there and the coach would yell, “Kramer, go out farther.”

I’d dutifully trot back another few feet and the coach--growing increasingly hard to hear and even see--would gesture toward somewhere in the next county.

At the end of one inning, I asked the coach why he was doing this. “Nobody’s ever going to hit it that far,” I pointed out.

“Maybe,” he said. “But remember, it’s always easier to run in than it is to run out.”

This has proved to be a Great Truth. So in my role as wine coach, here’s my advice: Always serve your wines, red or white, cool--maybe even a little too cool. A cold wine will always warm up, but I’ve never had a warm wine cool down.

You’ve probably heard you should serve white wines cold and reds at room temperature, right? Wrong.

Well, not exactly wrong, but misleading. Any wine, red or white, tastes flat and “soupy” if it’s served too warm. Conversely, when wine is served too cold, its flavor is numbed. You get nothing from it.

There’s nothing esoteric about the “right” wine temperature. Mostly it’s common sense. Take the business about room temperature, for example.

The old advice about serving red wines at room temperature comes from Europe, where houses lacked central heating, and many still do. When a wine was brought up from the cellar (temperature 50 to 55 degrees), it was indeed brought to room temperature, which was, at most, 60 degrees. That’s considerably cooler than many American homes, summer or winter.

All of which brings us back to the idea of an appropriate temperature for wine, especially red wines. Many red wines taste better when served cooler than what we generally get in restaurants. For example, nearly all Pinot Noirs taste better when served quite cool, no higher than 60 degrees. This is because Pinot Noir--like some Italian reds, such as Dolcetto and Barbera--is not an especially tannic wine.

Tannins come from grape skins and stems. White wines spend little or no time in contact with their skins, so they don’t have any tannins to speak of. Red wines, in comparison, spend days or even weeks in contact with their skins and sometimes stems. This extracts color and flavor--and tannins.

Tannins are harsh and rasping by nature, and they are emphasized by cooler temperatures. That’s one reason white wines can be successfully served quite cold and why red wines shouldn’t be served as cool as whites.

That said, we need to remember that the current winemaking fashion is to reduce the traditional long vat times. The result is that many inherently tannic grape varieties, such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Nebbiolo, emerge from their fermenting vats these days as fragrant and supple as a baby from a bath.

In other words, modern red winemaking lends itself to cool serving temperatures. Many of today’s top reds taste best served cellar-cool.

Still, serving red wine chilled goes against the grain at many restaurants. Most restaurants continue to present their red wines at American (much too warm) room temperature. If you request an ice bucket to cool the wine a little, you get raised eyebrows or even arguments suggesting that you, sir or madam, are a boor.

An ice bucket filled with both water and ice cubes lowers the temperature of a full bottle of wine about one degree a minute. (By the way, this business of adding water to the ice cubes is critical. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been in restaurants--including so-called sophisticated ones--that take the phrase “ice bucket” quite literally. A properly filled ice bucket should have enough water in it for the cubes to float.)

Refrigerators are less efficient. A full bottle of wine at 70 degrees needs about an hour and 15 minutes in the refrigerator to reach 60 degrees. An ice bucket will do it in 10 minutes.

Ice buckets can be messy, though. One very efficient alternative is a freezer-chilled, gel-filled cylindrical sleeve (see Cookstuff, H7) that slides over the bottle. Experience (and testing) reveals that it’s as efficient as an ice bucket in chilling wines.

Which red wine tastes best served cool? No question, it’s Pinot Noir. In fact, in Burgundy it’s commonly served too cool. The ancient stone cellars there can be so chilly that when a bottle brought straight up from the cellar is poured, a haze forms on the glass when the wine is poured. That’s a bit too cool (although, boy, what a cellar).

Zinfandel, with its bright berry flavors (at least when young), is also a good red to chill. This is a little tricky though. Unlike Pinot Noir, it’s a tannic grape variety, and much depends on how it has been made. Many young Zins taste fresher and livelier when served cool, but if the Zin is a tannic beast, a cool temperature will only heighten that element.

Cabernet Sauvignon is even trickier. Tannins again. Some Cabs are deliciously fruity and take well to cool temperatures. Others are not so accommodating. Cabernet Franc, on the other hand, almost always tastes swell when served cool. It’s a less tannic variety that shows its berry qualities best at cool temperatures.

Chianti, made mostly from Sangiovese, is a good choice for a chill. Here, too, much depends on how tannic it is, but I always cool down my Chianti, as well as nearly all my Italian reds. Then again, I serve all my reds, even Ports, at pretty brisk temperature, especially in the summer.

Although this business of the “right” temperature, like that of the “correct” fork, can get ridiculous, one fundamental Little League-quality truth remains: You can always bring a wine in from the cold.