Summertime is here and it’s not uncommon for temperatures to reach 80°, 90°, or even 100° degrees—yet wine lovers have long been told they should serve their red wines at room temperature. This presents a problem because room temperature is generally around 74° year-round with modern heating and air conditioning. But the correct temperature to serve red wine is actually cellar temperature, which is somewhere closer to 55°.
This is easy if you live in a sturdy stone chateau with wine niches carved into the limestone cave beneath your house, but since most of us don’t, let’s talk about ways to drop the bottle temperature closer to 55° or 60° and let’s discuss which red wines taste the best when chilled. Let’s start with a simple idea: don’t be afraid to chill your reds, especially when it’s really hot outside. Heat intensifies the feel of tannins in wine, especially the mouth-coating sensations and drying effects that can make it unpleasant to drink.
So, lowering the temperature of the bottle is a good thing to do. When it’s extremely warm neither of us even wants a red wine when the sun is blazing, so often we’ll wait until the sun sets to fire up the grill and drink nicely chilled red wines. There are a number of methods to get your wine to the proper temperature and keep it there.
The easiest is to keep them at 55° in a temperature-controlled wine cooler, but if you haven’t invested in one yet here are some ideas that don’t require a degree in.
