Keep reds out of saunas, whites out of freezers

MOST Americans drink their white wines too cold. Their attitude is best summed up by a comment an otherwise sophisticated (and wine-loving) friend of mine once made over lunch: “White wine is just supposed to quench your thirst and refresh you.”

Sure, some light, crisp whites -- Muscadet, Sauvignon Blanc, Albarino -- are refreshing. But thirst-quenching? Personally, I prefer water. White wine -- good white wine, especially Rieslings from Alsace, Germany and Austria, and the better Chardonnay-based whites from Burgundy and Napa and Sonoma -- can be lush and luxurious. They’re wines to be sipped and savored, ideal accompaniments to a wide range of foods.

Chilling these wines too much mutes their flavors and suppresses their distinctive aromas. I might like a raspberry Popsicle on a hot day, but if I’m eating dinner, I’d much rather have fresh raspberries for dessert.

Having said that, I think many restaurants make an even bigger mistake with their red wines than their customers make with white wines. Too many red wines are served too warm.

Too warm for red is as bad as too cold for white. You can’t really taste or smell the wine as it was meant to be. At temperatures much above 68 degrees, the alcohol evaporates quickly, upsetting the balance in red wine and leaving it flabby-tasting.

When people say red wine should be served at room temperature, they often forget that when that term was coined, central heating was not common; rooms in most homes were considerably cooler than they are today.

When restaurateurs tell me their reds are “room temperature,” I often say, “But the room in question shouldn’t be a sauna.”

Restaurants don’t store their wine in a sauna, of course. They may even have temperature-controlled cellars. But to avoid forcing the wait staff to run to the cellar to fill every order, they keep some bottles at the bar or in another convenient (but not necessarily cool) location in the restaurant. This is a problem both in the hot summer months and now, in the winter holiday season, when restaurants often crank up the thermostat to keep customers comfortable.

I’ve even seen wine stored, standing up, on a high shelf that backs up to the kitchen wall -- and in a couple of instances, in the kitchen itself.

Why go to the trouble of buying good wine if you’re not going to store it -- all of it -- properly? Don’t these restaurateurs realize that if a customer buys a wine and isn’t happy with it, he may not order wine next time -- especially if he’s relatively new to wine and isn’t quite sure why he’s disappointed in that bottle? Worse yet, he may decide not to return at all.

The “correct” temperature for red wines (and for whites, for that matter) varies depending the varietal. Just as sparkling wines and dessert wines are best when served colder than a full-bodied Chardonnay, so a Beaujolais should be served cooler than a good Bordeaux.

In fact, Burgundy usually tastes best when served cooler (say, 58 to 62 degrees) than Bordeaux (say, 62 to 66 degrees).

You probably don’t carry a wine thermometer to the restaurant with you. I don’t. You may not have one at home either. I have several -- all gifts -- but I never use them. What I do use is common sense or -- more precisely -- my palate and my nose.

Even experts disagree on the precise temperature at which various wines best show their true selves. The real issues are: How does the wine smell? How does it taste? Remember, wine is made from fruit, from grapes. Can you smell and taste the fruit -- any fruit -- or is the wine flat or flabby or one-dimensional? Unlike a steak, which can’t be made more rare if it’s overcooked, wine can be adjusted to your palate once served.

When I’m served a red that’s too warm, I politely ask the waiter to put it in an ice bucket for 10 minutes or so. Some of them look at me as if I’d asked them to put ice cubes in my Corton-Charlemagne. But I don’t want the wine chilled; I just want it cooled slightly to proper drinking temperature.

Similarly, if you order white wine and it arrives ice-cold, ask the waiter or sommelier to leave the bottle on the table instead of plunging it into an ice bucket after you’ve had your first taste. If you drink a wine that’s been chilled to just 54 to 57 degrees, instead of five or 10 degrees cooler, you might be surprised by the nuances in taste you’ll discover -- and by the way the wine evolves as you empty the bottle.

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David Shaw can be reached at [email protected].