Colder glasses ?

[Andre]

Greetings all,

The heat waves are rushing vintages all over but are turning long sitdowns to a somewhat unpleasat treat.

I went out with my wife to a new bistro some time ago and the wine list had nothing interesting on. My wife asked for a glass of read and I made do with Tequila on the rocks.

The hot glass turned the simple wine extremely unpleasant, this could have happened because of the weather or dishwasher.

The waitress did not accept my comment end answered that " red wine should be served at room temperature"

Do you or would you chill a glass of wine brefore you serve wine in it ?

Thanks, and a good week-end to all.

[Carema]

The waitress did not accept my comment end answered that " red wine should be served at room temperature"

What if the room is 85 degrees F?

[Winot]

This is becoming as bete noire of mine. Over the last few weeks in London I have been served a succession of red wines at 25C or so. I've taken to asking for them to be stuck in an ice bucket to get them down to 15-20C.

[Andre]

It was actually around the 90 degrees that night.

[Carema]

Exactly. So. We all know that red wine is served way too warm and white way too cold. Maybe we should do an international sit-in one day to protest this blatant disregard to proper temperature.

A while ago I worked in a well reputed Seattle restaurant. The wine was not stored very properly (I always thought it was too warm). This English dude came in (apparently not you WINOT) and ordered the Finca Allende and then declared we were serving it too cold and asked that I HEAT IT UP! So I went over to the espresso machine and wanded a very hot bath for this poor bottle. EW. Then we stuck it in there until it was nice and stewed. Needless to say his lady friend was very impressed by his knowledge of wine and his apt handling of a wine that was obviously stored in WAY TOO COLD AN AREA- sheez.....

[Andre]

I have one English word for this - shocking !

What I am aiming at is a better control of the temperature through the use of glass.

I noticed, in my case, that the wines and the glasses were not stored in the same place. This could lead to a change in the intended temperature.

Just a thought....

[jsolomon]

Do you or would you chill a glass of wine brefore you serve wine in it ?

Just as it is not bad manners to ask that a coffee cup be prewarmed, I do not think that it is bad manners to ask that a glass for wine be brought to a proper temperature.

However, what you will notice is that if you are not drinking your wine out of something as massive as a coffee mug (not china coffee cup) there will not be a whole lot of difference because a little mass with a mid-level specific heat, say .5 oz. of glass compared to 4 or 6 ounces of wine (general with the glass, stingy with the wine) is not going to make a whole lot of difference, IMO, unless the glass is screeching hot (70C) or amazingly cold (0C). Especially over the long run of a whole glass of wine.

In this case, the bottle is the appropriate temperature insulating device for the wine and the appropriate thing to insist upon having at the right temperature. If you are in a classy enough place to have good cotton napkins, ask that they tie one around an appropriately temperature adjusted wine glass before consumption, and handle the glass by the stem. This usually works in Nebraska summers during 100+ heat.

Although, on those days, I change to drinking (shudder) bud light because it is light enough on your palate when you are hot, tired, and slightly dehydrated.

[jsolomon]

Andre,

How long was this meal? I just grabbed a glass of gewurtstraminer from my refrigerator, placed it in an RT glass (82 F in my apartment right now) and have it up in my loft which is about 88 right now with a thermometer in it.

FYI, glass seems like a fairly standard wine glass. I do not have mass info or a digital camera. My apologies.

Here are my current temperature points:

3:55 p.m. (2 min in glass) 41 F

4:04 p.m. (11 min in glass) 43 F

4:09 45 F

4:15 52 F

4:21 58 F

4:27 59 F

4:32 60 F

4:38 62 F

4:42 62 F

4:46 wine stirred to equilibrate throughout

4:46 64 F

4:51 64 F

4:57 65 F

I will edit with more temperature points as time goes on. I am not drinking from this glass for at least one hour.

Edited August 15, 2003 by jsolomon (log)

[jsolomon]

So, what you see is that the temperature begins to really stabilize around 20 degrees F below the room temperature.

Making a grand assumption that all wine glasses will act this way should show fairly well that drinking your wine lazily from the glass out in the heat is not going to be very good for a complex, good wine.

I would suggest changing wines to something simple, acceptable really cold so you can store the wine in ice in the bottle, etc. etc. etc. Kind of like how some of the french will drink a table wine of something like a blush or rose during the spring and summer.

We don't always need great wine, and wine wouldn't have survived as a normal drink of all classes if some of the lower quality stuffs weren't exquisitely drinkable as well.

As a side note, the gewurtstraminer is still fairly drinkable at this temperature, but it has lost its mouth feel and a LOT of depth. Would be great with a chilled grapefruit salad. But, I'm going to ribfest in a couple of hours, so all shall be forgotten in smoked pork bliss

[Andre]

Great answer thanks, [ some research too... ]

A couple of things got my attention:

"

there will not be a whole lot of difference because a little mass with a mid-level specific heat, say .5 oz. of glass compared to 4 or 6 ounces of wine (general with the glass, stingy with the wine) is not going to make a whole lot of difference, IMO, unless the glass is screeching hot (70C) or amazingly cold (0C). Especially over the long run of a whole glass of wine."

Theoretically you are correct, but when smelling a warm glass, I found the wine to be shockilngly aggressive. The small amount of wine driven to the side of the hot glass released unpleasant alcoholic aromas that would have sentenced the wine maker for life should he have met the waiter.

The simpler and thicker glass refused to cool down that easily.

"How long was this meal?"

The meal was as short as the possible after the waitresses answer. 20 minutes at the most.