Best Temperatures For Serving Wine
In our last post we concentrated on how to best store wine. The environment you create to store your wines have a huge impact on whether your wines will be damaged or delicious.
Best Wine Serving Temperature
Of similar importance is how you serve your wine. Most people take a bottle, open it and pour the wine into a glass. As you might well imagine, that’s not the best way to serve wine.
How Best To Serve Your Wines
One of the factors that influences the taste and aromas of wine when it’s consumed is the temperature at which it gets served. When you store wines you need to know what type of wine you have in order to create the best temperature to store the wine. It’s similar for serving wine.
The serving temperature varies for different wines. It depends on their region and grape variety. A fruity and light Beaujolais is best served at 12° below room temperature at around 57°F. A stronger, more robust and intense wine like a Bordeaux should be served merely underneath room temperature at around 64°F.
Wine Serving Tips
Below we created a table to outline the best serving temperatures by variety of wine:
| Wine Variety | Wine Characteristics | Serving Temperature |
| Shiraz, Bordeaux | Rich and intense red wines. | 65°F |
| Burgundy, Cabernet Sauvignon | Spicy warm and rich red wines. | 63°F |
| Pinot Noir, Rioja | Medium and lighter bodied red wines. | 61°F |
| Zinfandel, Chianti | Medium and lighter bodied red wines. | 59°F |
| Madeira, Chinon | Medium and lighter bodied red wines. | 57°F |
| Young Portugese and Spanish Wines | Medium and lighter bodied red wines. | 55°F |
| Beaujolais, Valpolicella | Fruity and juicy red wines. | 54°F |
| White Burgundy | Full-bodied white wines. | 52°F |
| Chardonnay, Australian Smillon | Medium and lighter bodied white wines. | 50°F |
| Chablix, Sauvignon Blanc | Medium and lighter bodied white wines. | 48°F |
| Muscats, Sauternes | Sparkling and sweet wines. | 45°F |
| Asti, Champagne | Sparkling and sweet wines. | 43°F |
You can see that there’s quite a temperature difference between serving full-bodied red wine vs. sweet white wine.
Below are a few wine serving tips you might want to consider:
- When you chill a red wine with high level of alcohol then it might help to chill the bottle of wine in order to smooth the taste of the wine.
- If you are unsure what the right temperature might be for a specific wine then simply make sure that you serve the wine a few degrees colder than the current room temperature.
- Never serve wine above room temperature of 68°F
These are just a few tips on how to best serve your wines. Wine refrigerators are designed to create a favorable environment to store your wines. Wine refrigerators are designed to create a favorable environment to store your wines. You can find wine refrigerator reviews of many of the bestselling brands.
