For too long I have sat idly by and watched wine drinkers consume their beverages with a reckless disregard to its temperature. So many times I have overheard entirely misguided diatribe on the dogmatic practice of drinking red wines at room temperature and whites as cold as you can get them.

My question is: Why?

Partially informed (and tragically under-informed) imbibers would argue that cooling a red wine would be palletious sabotage, robbing the wine of its full capacity to express its fruits and acidity?its true balance. They would not be entirely incorrect, though this is ironic given these same people have nothing against drinking their whites at refrigerator temperature. Where was it dictated the rules that apply for reds do not to white, and vice versa? How does temperature effect the perception of a wine to begin with? The truth is nothing less than obvious, once you understand the science.

Wine contains massive amounts of polyphenols, the compounds that contain the base components of a wine’s flavors and aromas. Polyphenols have chemical bonds to one another, and when these bonds are broken, magic is made. The bonds are broken in response to several stimuli, the most important of which are light, oxygen and heat. One of these is made quite obvious by the physical shape of a wine glass, but even more so by the very familiar practice of aerating a wine by means of swirling it in a circular motion creating a centrifuge. Ever wonder why people aerate so vigorously before burying their nose in the glass for a full inhalation of the wine’s aroma? This increases the surface-to-air ratio of the wine, integrating oxygen more rapidly into it, which releases more to the senses.

The other two means of facilitating this chemical reaction aren’t always as obvious, which brings me to the topic of this column: heat. As previously discussed, a wine will relent much more of itself with exposure to any or all of the three horsemen of a wine’s happy ending. Lets look at this in context: The temperature of your mouth is 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Ambient (room) temperature is 68 degrees Fahrenheit. This is a difference of 30 degrees. Now let’s give the wine a temperature of 58 degrees Fahrenheit, we have now increased the difference by 33 percent, effectively giving the polyphenols a 33 percent higher potency. This equation does not function exponentially though, as this effect is more of a hyperbola. There is a narrow window of a wine’s capability to express itself when subject to temperature manipulation. Too cold and you have a slightly tart and “hard” wine with little fruit or character and almost no balance. Too hot and you get flabby, simple jammy flavors and an unacceptable amount of alcohol.

So at what temperatures then should I drink my wine, you might ask? Generally, between 56 – 58 degrees is acceptable for most reds, and about 45 – 50 degrees for whites. This means about 15 minutes in the refrigerator for a red will bring the temperature just slightly lower than your goal to compensate for the inevitable rise in temperature before you actually drink it. As for whites, I will typically let them cool for 35 – 45 minutes, the goal here being to bring them just below your target temperature.

We have discussed the two most obvious and immediate influences of a wine’s degradation, the third is slightly less urgent in terms of an imminent threat, but it something to watch for when buying your wines. Light, specifically ultraviolet light is horrible for wine. Think about how a piece of colored paper will fade to a unrecognizable bleached out monotone when left on your dashboard for too long. Light essentially does the same thing to wine. So never buy the display bottle unless you know it hasn’t been there long (and believe me, you don’t know that).