Temperature and White Wine…. WTF?
22 Jan 2012 1 Comment
in Wine School
WTF is what I think almost every time I see someone bury their wine in an ice bucket. You are knocking the “brass balls” off of it! Wine is very temperature sensitive. For this bitch we will stick with white and deal with red another day. I like the red wine picture so posted it anyways.
Cold can “freeze” your taste buds. This heightens the acid receptors and numbs the others which are sweet, salty, bitter and “Umami”. Most don’t know the last one. (Save for another day too.) Cold also suppresses scent molecules in the wine. These two “suspects” now give you a simple equation for tart and acidic white wine. Sounds pretty crappy to me!
A good example of these two “criminals” on something else most of us are familiar with…… ice cream. There you are with a nice frozen bowl of ice cream. Tasted pretty good, right. Now you have been chatting for a bit or maybe had to go change a diaper?? I don’t know, whatever. Now you have a bowl of “warm cream”, no longer ice. You take a dip and now it tastes pretty darn sweet!! There you go, a nice home experiment to try if you have not yet experienced “warm cream”.
Wine as we appreciate it has been around hundreds of years and fridges have not. Go figure eh. So if your wine is as cold as your beer or milk it it too cold. Let it warm up a bit before enjoying. 8 to 12 degrees C is about average. Some sweet wines a bit cooler, fine Burgundy a bit warmer.
A fun wine lesson is to have your wine too cold then taste in 5 to 10 minute increments as it warms up. You will be amazed. Now stop sending back you wine and enjoy yourself.
Cheers,
Norm
P.S. Sorry for the long break on writing. I have had a couple great new changes to my life. Stay tuned!
