When looking to chill your favorite beverage, what temperature do you choose? How vague is it to say serve at “room temperature”? What is room temperature? 70 degrees (21 Celsius)? 75 degrees (24)?

Most people are familiar with the adage that one should drink red wine at room temperature. Given today’s central heating (and cooling as the case may be) this room temperature rule of thumb is simply not accurate.

I bring up temperature as I have been trying to give my reds some chilling time before serving lately and many people are surprised by this. I’m not as good about doing this in the winter time, but in the summer, drinking a HOT red wine is just NOT FUN (not that hot wine is fun in the winter, but…).

I have seen countless articles the past few weeks about beating the heat with cool beverages.

And while I do very much enjoy a nice crisp white or rose’ in the hot weather, I am not giving up my beloved reds. BUT, I will be a bit more careful as to the temperature I drink the red wine at.

I came across a very helpful little guide here in the San Jose Mercury news online “Expert opinions on optimal drinking temperatures“.

Of special interest to me was the recommended temperature for the following:

Red wine: 60 degrees (15.5 Celsius) – and can even be cooler for lighter reds

Water: 55 degrees (13)

Cola: 38-42 degrees (3 1/3 – 5 1/2) – they say that Pepsi should be 42 while Coke should be 38 – interesting huh?!

Dry white or rose’ wine: 45-55 degrees (7-13)

Sparkling wine or Beer: 40-50 degrees (4.5-10)

Milk: about 34 degrees (1 Celsius)

And you thought all those temperature controlled compartments in your friend’s new fridge were just a big gimmick and waste of time.

Happy cool, cold & icy cold Wine Tasting!

WTG

Tags: Beer, Coke, Pepsi, temperature, wine

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 10:44 am and is filed under Beer, Wine STUFF. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.