THE JOYS OF CHILLED RED WINE

THOSE WHO KNOW ME MIGHT BE SURPRISED TO HEAR THAT I ALMOST CAME TO BLOWS WITH SOMEONE IN A PUB A COUPLE OF YEARS BACK. RATHER, IT MIGHT BE MORE ACCURATE TO SAY THAT HE ALMOST CAME TO BLOWS WITH ME, SUCH WAS HIS ANGER.

Words Quentin Sadler

Red wine chilling in an ice bucket

photograph Adobe Stock

So, what caused this unlikely confrontation. Well, it was wine – of course. I was idling by the bar, waiting to be served, while a man was holding forth to his group of friends at a nearby table. I had been minding my own business quite happily, but my ears pricked up when I heard him explain to his audience that ‘red wine gets better, the warmer it is served’.

There was so much wrong with this piece of mangled “information” that, as a wine educator, I simply had to butt in. Ever the diplomat though, all I actually said was ‘well that isn’t entirely true, you know’. The gentleman concerned took a dim view of my undermining him in front of his disciples and within no time I was offered the chance to sort this “outside”.

Eventually, by demonstrating quivering cowardice, I managed to extricate myself, but I have mused on the encounter ever since. Especially when the weather is hot.

I joined the wine trade a long time ago and certain things back then were accepted as absolute rules, as though a vinous Moses had brought them down from a mountain engraved on tablets.

1: Red wine must be aged – the longer the better.

2: Red wine does not go with fish and white wine must not be served with meat.

3: Red wine must be served at ‘room temperature’.

Frankly, I have always been wary of number three. People used to use the French term chambré, which means to bring up to room temperature. Which is all fine and dandy, but modern centrally-heated rooms are usually around 20˚C, or more, not the 13/14/15˚C that would have been the case in 1860s, when these things became fixed.

Then there is the reason always given for this warming of red wine; that it softens the tannins in the wine and that serving it cooler exacerbates the bitterness of the tannins. I have not always found either of those things to be true, sometimes yes, but not for all wine.

My forty years in the wine trade have encompassed a huge amount of change and yet at the same time, certain views about wine and terms used about wine are rather Dickensian and, to me, bear very little relevance to modern wine.

Most wine drinkers simply do not believe me when I try to explain that everything changed in the 1980s. Growers, who were not formally trained in Europe in those days, started picking the grapes when they were fully ripe and the sugar content had been measured scientifically. At the same time cold fermentations in inert, cleanable stainless steel tanks became more and more normal. All this allowed for hygienic winemaking in a way that had simply not existed in the past. This allowed for much lower sulphur levels in modern wine than had been normal for the previous hundred years or so.