Wine Serving Guide

Serving Temperatures

White and Rosé Wines:  About 13-16°C — chill the bottle of wine for up to about two hours in the refrigerator, or for faster service, about half an hour in the freezer.

Red Wines:  About 17-20°C — chill the bottle of wine for up to about half an hour in the refrigerator.

Proper serving temperatures reveal the aromas, bouquet, flavors, and complexity of properly produced and aged wines. Sometimes wine is served cooler, to hide the flaws of poor quality wines and to repress the 'alcohol bite' of lighter bodied wines. Properly stored wine (12.7±2°C at 80% humidity) requires time to reach proper serving temperatures.[1]

Serving Glassware

Preferably, use glass stemware that has:

1. A stem for holding, in order to retain the wine's temperature.
2. A clear bowl to enable seeing the color and textures of the wine.
3. A bowl with a narrower aperture for swirling the wine without spilling, in order to aerate and release its full aromas or bouquet.
4. A thin-lipped bowl for comfortable sipping.
5. a.  White and Rosé Wines:  Narrow-bowl stemware, in order to retain better the chilling temperature.
   b.  Red Wines:  Wide-bowl stemware, in order to enable better aeration.

Glassware must be clean and free from dishwasher rinse-aid chemical agents.

Aeration

Aeration of the wine does not necessarily benefit all wines[2]:

• Younger wines usually benefit more from aeration, which often 'relaxes' the flavors and makes them taste smoother and better integrated in aroma, texture, and flavor.[2,3]
• Older wines exposed to extended aeration generally fade, or lose their character and flavor intensity.[3]

Despite these general rules, wine should be tasted as soon as it is opened to determine how long it should be aerated, if at all.[2]

Serving Order

When serving more than one wine varietal, the following order is suggested:

• White, rosé, red.
• Light to heavy body. Without tasting, heavier wines are thicker, deeper in color, and generally more intense on the nose.[1]
• Dry to sweet. Without tasting, sweeter wines are denser and leave thick, viscous streaks ('legs') inside the glass, when swirled.[1]
• Young to old.
• Simple to complex.

Pouring

Pour approximately less than half of the glass, in order to enable swirling the wine for aeration without spilling.

 

References

1. "Wine tasting," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2008, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_tasting>.
2. Johnson, Hugh, and Robinson, Jancis, The World Atlas of Wine, Mitchell Beazley, p 46, 13 September 2001, ISBN 978-1840003321.
3. "Wine," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2011, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine>.
4. "Fruity character and breathing times," New Straits Times, 18 September 2005.