Читать книгу The Wine Etiquette Guide - Your Defense Against Wine Snobbery - Chuck Blethen - Страница 13

“A thousand cups of wine do not suffice when true friends meet, but half a sentence is too much when there is no meeting of minds.”

- Chinese proverb

Wine is alive. It has a complex chemistry that changes with temperature and environment. It is important to store it properly and serve it at the correct temperature because the temperature at which a wine is served has an immense impact on its taste. Serving wine cool will mask some imperfections—good for young or cheap wine—while a warmer wine temperature allows expression of the wine's characteristics—best with an older or more expensive wine.

A bottle of wine will cool 2 °C (4 °F) for every ten minutes in the refrigerator, and will warm at about this same rate when removed from the refrigerator and left at room temperature—the temperature of the room will affect the speed with which the wine warms up. A temperature probe inserted through the cork of a bottle of wine placed in a refrigerator was recorded to take 2 hours and 45 minutes for the wine to reach 55 degrees from room temperature. If you need to chill a bottle of wine in a hurry, 35 minutes in the freezer will do the trick. Better yet is to place the wine bottle in a bucket of ice and fill it with water. Your wine will be chilled in 15 minutes. Here is a basic serving temperature guideline for various wines:

Type Of Wine	Fahrenheit	Celsius
Sparkling	42° to 54°	6° to 10°
Rosé	48° to 54°	9° to 12°
White	48° to 58°	9° to 14°
Sherry (Light)	48° to 58°	9° to 14°
Red	57° to 68°	13° to 20°
Fortified (Port)	57° to 68°	13° to 20°
Sherry (Dark)	57° to 68°	13° to 20°

Temperature levels can camouflage defects in certain wines and heighten subtle taste experiences in others. A simple rule of thumb for cooling a wine is to watch the clock when you chill a wine. It takes about 10 minutes for a wine to drop 4°F (2°C) in the average refrigerator and the opposite to occur at room temperature.