When I was working with enthusiastic newbies at my old wine bar, one of the persistent myths I’d have to dispel time and again went something like this:
If you buy a chilled wine, don’t let it come up to room temperature before you drink it! That change of temperature ruins the wine!
This myth simply doesn’t make sense to me. Of course, I can see why you wouldn’t want a wine to undergo rapid temperature change, but any well-made wine can withstand room temperatures after being chilled. Even multiple times. But I could find no documentation of this. So I asked an old colleague of mine – the U.C. Davis-trained Winemaker Alison Crowe – who had this to say about that…
Alison Crowe, Winemaker
Oi! There is no real reason [a wine can't be chilled and then warmed] as long as the change is not dramatic (wide temp swing, think 45 F-110 F!) or sudden (in 30 minutes!) there is no real reason to call a bottle “defunct” if it’s been chilled to serving temp from room or cellar temp even a few times.
It’s all a continuum of time, temp and duration. There’s no doubt that a bottle can be compromised w/ high temperatures – sitting around in the back of one’s trunk in the middle of summer. Cold is less damaging. But wide swings, and many of them over time, can wrench a wine’s chemistry back and forth continually….and that may be negative for some wines. But twice!? I wouldn’t hesitate.
Over-Zealous Wine Coolers
Thanks Alison! Please note, her advice does not apply to wines that have been over-stored in the freezer, an instant-gratification technique that can lead to ruinous (and rather phallic) results (photo).
An average refrigerator maintains a temperature of about 42 degrees. A bottle of room-temperature wine placed in such an environment will begin to chill at a rate of about one degree every ten minutes. At that rate of change, a bottle taken from a 70 degree room and placed in the refrigerator won’t attain cellar temperature (let’s say, 55 degrees) for two hours and ten minutes – a rate of change far more gradual than the one Alison warns about.
So feel free to take that excess wine out of your refrigerator and store it in a more convenient place. As long as your storage area is dark, free of vibration and not subject to drastic temperature swings – your wine will be fine!
Cheers!
Dave the Wine Merchant
866-746-7293
www.SidewaysWineClub.com
Quote of the Day
“Whether the weather be fine, Whether the weather be not, Whether the weather be cold, Whether the weather be hot, We’ll weather the weather, Whatever the whether, Whether we like it or not” ~ Unknown
