47. Unlocking the Magic of Wine Temperature

In this episode of The Wineitupanotch Podcast, we discuss the importance of serving wine at the correct temperature. 

Tune in to learn about the correct temperature for serving different wine styles, as well as practical tips on how to cool down or warm up wines efficiently. 

You will learn how wine temperature affects your experience and enjoyment. We also discuss the power of methods such as using ice baths, your refrigerator or freezer, a decanter, or even your hands to achieve the optimal serving temperature, whether you are in a pinch….or you have a bit more time! 

Check out our article on this topic too! 

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Transcript

In Episode 47 of The Wineitupanotch Podcast, host Anshu Grover delves into the critical topic of serving wine at the correct temperature. 

Listeners learn about the ideal temperatures for various wine styles and practical methods for cooling down or warming up wine to achieve the best flavor profile. 

Anshu shares insights emphasizing how temperature impacts wine's aromas, flavors, acidity, and tannins and also offers quick and efficient tips for adjusting wine temperature using simple methods such as ice baths, refrigerators/freezers, decanters, and even your hands when needed.

EPISODE TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Welcome 

00:28 The Importance of Wine Temperature

06:05 Optimal Serving Temperatures

08:03 Tips for Cooling Wine Quickly

12:00 Tips for Warming Wine Quickly

15:50 Concluding Thoughts

EPISODE TRANSCIPT

Anshu Grover: 

[00:00:00] 

Hello and welcome to The Wineitupanotch Podcast, a podcast where we talk about wine, life, and everything in between. My name is Anshu Grover, I'm a certified wine expert and your host, and I'm so thrilled that you've decided to join me today. Thank you for doing so. 

Welcome to Episode 47 of The Wineitupanotch Podcast.

Today we will be engaging in a little quick tip episode. I love these because I'm able to bring you little snippets of knowledge very quickly. Hopefully these are snippets of knowledge that are extremely useful to you. And today I think the topic will be of interest to a wide range of wine lovers, because today we are talking about temperature and wine. 

Now let me just start off by saying I believe that the temperature that a wine is served at is extremely important. This is not some sort of fancy notion that's been created by a bunch of wine geeks just to make wine more complicated. 

There are actually reasons why certain wines, certain wine grapes, and the wines that are derived from them, need to be served at certain temperatures in order to get the optimal experience. And I would layer on that wine making techniques can also impact the temperature that is optimal for a given wine. 

Now, where did I get the idea for this episode from? Earlier this week, if you follow me on Instagram, you would've seen that I was invited to attend an event with Wakefield Wines here in Toronto.  

Wakefield Wines is actually a fairly large Australian producer. They are based in South Australia with vineyards in the Clare Valley. They're one of the first families of wine in Australia. They planted vineyards back in the late 1960s and have the largest plantings of Cabernet Sauvignon in the Southern hemisphere. They're also very focused on consumer-centric, consumer-focused wines and they've got a real interest in organic and biodynamic practices, so a really great producer to think about and know about, if you're looking for good quality price ratios when it comes to wine.

But let's get back to the event. 

This event's theme was around temperature and wine and one of the founding members or the founding family members of the winery, Justin Taylor was there with us. Justin is, I believe, the son 

[00:02:00] 

of the founder of the winery. And Justin Taylor was with us talking about what he kept saying as "degrees matter". 

And his main point was that at the end of the day, to get the most out of a wine - whether it be a white wine or a red wine - you want to get that wine at the right temperature. I have to say he did a fantastic job of emphasizing the importance of temperature when it comes to serving wines and enjoying them at their optimal best.

I do also want to say that they've got a really cool innovation on their bottles. When you flip the bottle around on the back label, they actually have some technology and information that will help you to ascertain what temperature they would recommend the wine that you're consuming from them be served at, and will also give you a reading of the current temperature of the wine.

So a very cool way of making wine more accessible for consumers for sure. But what I want to share is some of the underlying information, which I will give credit to the event organizers for sharing and packaging up in a really neat and succinct way that I felt I could share on a quick tip episode with you. 

Like I said, temperature does matter. Why is that? 

First of all, a lot of wine enjoyment really is about aromas and flavors. And when you don't have a wine at the right temperature, it can be hard to pick up some of the nuances of the aromas and flavors that are present in the glass.

Secondly, when you're dealing with wines with a slightly more alcoholic profile - so let's think about red wines again - if they're served too hot, you end up getting a really intense expression of alcohol that will overpower and overshadow the characteristics of the wine that the winemaker is trying to get you to enjoy. A lot of those fruit and earthy notes will be covered up by the expression of alcohol, which can feel really intense when a wine is too warm. 

Secondly, wines can appear quite flabby as I like to call them, which just means they get a little fat and undefined in the mouth when they're too warm. And this is an issue for both white and red wines…. wherein if the temperature's too high, you just don't get that clean, 

[00:04:00] 

lean, acid note that you're looking for in wines that keeps things light in the mouth. So you get a much heavier expression of a wine when it is too warm. And if you couple that with higher alcohol levels, that can feel really overpowering and can lead to that feeling of, you know, I really don't like this wine because it doesn't taste good and it's not that it doesn't taste good per se - it doesn't taste good at the temperature that it's being experienced at. 

I think another thing that's worth looking at when it comes to temperature and wine is around acidity. This may be slightly more prevalent for white wines, but I think it applies equally to both.

Acidity is a key feature of wine and as I said, particularly for white wines, acidity can be one of the defining features of a white wine. But when the wine is too warm - again, going back to that concept of it becoming too round, too thick, too flabby in the mouth - it's hard to pick up on that beautiful acidity that runs through that wine that is a cornerstone or a really important feature of the wine that the winemaker wants you to experience. 

So again, that acidity - to have its optimal expression -  the wine needs to be served at a good temperature.

Of course, let's not forget about tannins. Tannins are also impacted by a wine's temperature. 

For wines like a Cabernet Sauvignon that can have a highly tannic structure, serving the wine at too cold a temperature can actually get a wine to be too lean. And so you feel those tannins a little too much, let's say more than they're intended to be felt. 

So these factors - acidity, tannins, flavors, aromas - these are all part of the structure of a wine, they're part of the complexity and nuance that a wine maker strives so hard to attain when they put a wine together, and they really want you to enjoy that. So if you're missing some of these marks, you know, it's fair to say that you're not getting the optimal experience from the wine that you're having.

And this notion transcends the price point of the wine or the quality of the wine, if you will, or the quality of the winemaker. It doesn't really have anything to do with that. Whether it's an affordable wine or a really expensive one, 

[00:06:00] 

temperature does matter. Or in the words of our guest, Justin Taylor, at the event I was at - “Degrees Matter”.

Now if you're wondering what are the optimal serving temperatures, there are lots of charts available where you can get this information and there are little tools too, little gadgets….thermometer type gadgets that you can put in your wine bottle which will tell you that a wine is at an optimal temperature.

But let's just go through some of those main concepts. 

For dessert wines or for Champagnes, they should pretty much be at fridge temperature. So about four degrees Celsius (and I'll be speaking in Celsius here since I'm a Canadian and that's the unit of measure that we prefer here). 

For most white wines that are crisp and light and unoaked, the ideal temperature is somewhere around 10 or 11 degrees.

And when you get into wines that have oak treatment and are a little rounder and need, you know, they're a little fuller bodied, they need a little bit more warmth, the ideal temperature tends to be around 12 or 13 degrees. That 12 or 13 or 14 degree mark, if you will, is also a very good serving temperature for many red wines that do not have oak treatment. They're intended to be fruitier and lighter, so they're also served ideally at a lighter temperature. 

And most red wines are ideally served at 16 to 18 degrees. Now, colloquially, you'll hear a lot of people saying the ideal serving temperature for red wine is room temperature. And yes, that is true.

But let's not forget that most of us - certainly I'm guilty of this - keep our rooms at a much higher temperature than about 18 degrees. I mean, I hate the cold! So generally speaking in my home, be it summer or winter, you know it's gonna be around 22 degrees in the house and that is three, four degrees warmer than the top end of where most red wines should be for optimal serving.

So keep some of those ideas in mind. And as I said, there are some really great tools available in the market on everything from Amazon to specialty wine websites and stores that can help you to measure the temperature in your bottle of wine. Or if you choose to consume Wakefield 

[00:08:00] 

wines, the back label is going to help you because they've put that innovation right on the label!  

But let's now get to the other part of what I wanted to discuss in this particular quick tip episode, which is how do you get your wine to the optimal temperature? 

So if you've put a wine in the fridge and it's a red wine, it's likely to be too cold when you pull it out. And frankly, a lot of white wines will probably be too cold as well. 

If you've left your bottle of wine at room temperature on a counter, be it white or red, they likely need to be adjusted in terms of temperature as well. And listen, if you've planned really well, you know in advance of when you're gonna be consuming the wine….good for you. You are in a very small fraction of the population that does these things well, and you probably don't need the advice that I'm about to dole out here, but if you're like the rest of us, myself included, sometimes the wine being at the right temperature can be a little bit of an afterthought, or you realize, maybe once you're already with your guests and serving or about to serve them, that the wine is not quite at the temperature that you want it to be. 

So what do you do in those situations? 

So I'm very excited to be able to share a couple of cool tips with you that were shared with us at this event. I found them to be very practical and pragmatic and hopefully will help you in the future.

Let's assume you have a wine sitting at room temperature and you need to cool it down. You've got guests coming and, oops, I forgot to cool the wine! So what do I do? 

So there's a couple of methods that you can actually use. 

Method number one would be truly to put it in the refrigerator or the freezer.

I don't really recommend the freezer because it can mess with the integrity of the wine. But if you had to, you could. You could lay the bottle flat in the freezer for a quick chill, set a timer. Don't forget about it because that could lead to an exploding bottle, but in about 10 to 15 minutes you could probably get that wine chilled down a bit. 

Better still is the refrigerator. If you have had a little bit of an extra warning or you remembered early enough, you can actually put your wine bottle in the fridge, and you know what? In about two hours for a white wine, or about 45 minutes for a red wine, you can get that wine chilled sufficiently for it to 

[00:10:00] 

be better than it being at room temperature.

Better still is what is known as an ice bath. If you think about when you go to restaurants, you might have witnessed this, where filling a large bucket with ice is not often what they do. So your instinct might be to fill a bucket with ice and drop your wine into it. Champagne, for example, is often shown as being chilled on ice.

However, that is not going to chill your wine down quickly. If you need to do it quickly, you want to do what is known as an ice bath. And in that instance, you would fill a bucket with ice water and actually also a handful of salt. And there's a, uh, you know, science-based reaction. Don't ask me, I'm not the right person to explain it to you!.... but there's a science-based reaction that takes place when you have the water, the ice, and the salt together, which will lower the water's temperature down quite quickly and drastically, if you will. So when you submerge the bottle and you keep rotating it for about 15 to 20 minutes, you can get your wine chilled relatively quickly. 

And think about when you've been dining, you might have seen this done. I certainly have. Professional sommeliers…. if you bring in your own bottle or you order a bottle that maybe isn't at the right temperature…they will often submerge it in an ice bath to bring that temperature down.  

The last option that you have is to have some sort of a cooling sleeve. You can buy wine chillers and cooling sleeves on the market, and these can be a great option for bringing the temperature of a wine down quickly. Again, this is something that could take, you know, 15, 20, 30 minutes if you have that kind of time. 

And also going back to the freezer, just looking at the tips that were shared. I like this one as well, so you can actually get some paper towel or a towel. Wet it and then wrap your bottle in that towel and put it in the freezer. Wrapping the bottle in a damp paper towel before you place it in the freezer will actually help to speed up the cooling because the moisture in the towel is going to get cold and it's going to interact with the bottle and make that bottle cool quicker. I kind of like that because you could maybe do it faster than just putting your bottle in the freezer and, oops, I forgot about it, and exploded in the freezer. Nobody wants that mess 

[00:12:00] 

to clean up!  

Now what about if you have to warm your wine up? You have put a wine in the fridge, you left it there. You know, perhaps overnight you pull it out. It's definitely too cold. So there are a couple ways to deal with that too. 

Ideally, you've got some time. You let it rest at room temperature. So put it out. I would still say in a dark space, right? Don't expose it to too much light, but put it out on the counter or on your credenza if you're about to have dinner and just let it slowly warm up. Something you've probably experienced in a setting such as a restaurant, or if you've gone to a wine tasting, you know, you enjoy the wine and as you do, it changes temperature naturally, and you can taste the differences and the nuances as it changes temperature. So a very gentle way to warm a wine up. 

If you are somewhere and someone has served you a glass of wine that you find too cold - and this could be red or white wines. I've certainly had this happen to me where I felt that the red wine was too cold, or even the white wine was too cold because perhaps it was an oaked wine I wanted it to be a little bit warmer - you can, you know, (this is a recommended tip) hold the glass in your hands and warm that wine up. 

This is one of the reasons actually we recommend you don't hold a glass of wine with the bowl in your hands. You're always supposed to hold it by the stem because the warmth from your hands will actually warm the wine up and often, you know, we don't want that. But in an instance where you've got a wine served too, that's too cold for your liking and you're feeling like you're maybe not getting the most out of it, you can use your hands - put them on the bowl of the glass for a few minutes and you'll find that that wine warms up nicely.

There's also a warm water bath. In this case, you would actually place the bottle of wine in a bowl or a bucket of warm, not hot, but warm water, you definitely don't want to use hot water because that's going to mess around with the difference in temperature between the wine and the water, and could cause a bit of shock. But with warm water, again, you're doing a gentle, slow rising of temperature.

It might work a little faster, frankly, than leaving it at room temperature. It may not be for everybody. I think 

[00:14:00] 

the, again, the, you know, warm bath or the cold bath, there is water. It does involve putting water on the label. I guess it depends on the type of wine you're having and who you're serving it to, if you really want the label to be intact. But notwithstanding, it is an option for gently warming up your wine.

Lastly, the tip that was shared with us for warming a wine up was decanting it in a warm room. So if you get yourself a nice decanter, you've got a red wine that you're feeling is a little too cold, decant it. The process of decanting will warm the wine up and will also aerate it so you get a bit of a double whammy there, and you can get your wine to the right temperature. 

So those are a couple of cool little tips that you can remember when you are in a situation where you're serving wine to guests and you want it to be at the right temperature. Think about an ice bath. If you need to cool a wine down, you can pop it in the fridge or freezer (be very careful with the freezer1) or use a wine chiller or a sleeve. 

And if you find that the wine needs to be warmed , you can let it rest at room temperature, use the hands to warm up the bowl of the glass that you're drinking, try a warm water bath, or try a bit of decanting. 

Some pretty cool tips, don't you think? I think we can all find ourselves sometimes in situations where wine is not at the ideal temperature and we need to do something about it.

I hope you found today's quick tip episode helpful. I do want to give full credit for these tips to Wakefield Wines and the team that did their event here in Toronto. I love these little tips that they shared and I wanted to share them with you!

If you use any of these and you find them to be particularly helpful, or if you already use them and you know you prefer one or the other, definitely reach out and let me know or send me a message on social media. I'm on Instagram, I am on TikTok, I'm on LinkedIn -all the places. Better still, post something on your own social media account and tag The Wineitupanotch Podcast so that we can see what you're up to. I would love to engage with you in that way! 

And as always, I would ask you if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're new to it or you have been listening for a while, the best thing I could ask you to do is to leave a review and 

[00:16:00] 

to share this podcast with someone else that you think would enjoy it.

We're trying to reach as many wine lovers as we can with our content and really help to bring wine to life for consumers and you, with your loyal listening (first of all, thank you so much for that!) - you are a key aspect of getting the message out, so please do like, comment, share. It means a lot to me, and I look forward to hanging out with you again in Episode 48….soon to come! 

In the meantime, I wish you lots of love, peace, light, and of course, fantastic wine…at the right temperature! 

Take care. Bye.