Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Chilled Red Wine?

CE Petit sent me a link to Eric Asimov’s NY Times story on drinking chilled red wine:

I am feeling the heat. I am feeling the sweat on the back of my neck and the hot, wet air pressing against my chest like a rock on my heart. ... Do I want something hot to drink? No, I do not. ... Do I want something cool and refreshing, something that will revive my spirit, stir my soul and go hand-in-hand with outdoor grilling? Yes, indeed.

Now, nobody needs a sermon promoting the joy of a cool drink in the summertime. But I’m talking about red wine.

Sometimes a glass of white wine is not enough. Nor is a beer, an iced tea or a lemonade, though heaven knows few things are better than a tart lemonade in a beaded glass on a hot summer’s day. ...

we want red wine. And how are we going to drink this red wine?

That’s right, chilled! Cold, cool, brisk, whatever you want to call it, we are going to enjoy this red wine at a temperature that refreshes, restores and revitalizes even the most exhausted soul.

Asimov continues by describing various varieties that can take chilling. The basic principle is to go for light-bodied, low tannin wines, which makes good sense.

With one exception, which I’ll discuss in a minute, I’m not a big fan of red wine at fridge temperature. As I described in ny op-ed The Red Wines of Summer, however, I do like some red wines at cold cellar temperature in the summer:

Ideally, a red wine for summer will have most of these characteristics:

• Light to medium body
• Able to be served while chilled to cold cellar temperature (say 54 degrees)
• Smooth tannins, but enough acidity to be refreshing
• Low alcohol, since few things are less refreshing than the hot sensation of high alcohol
• Plenty of fruit and perhaps the slightest touch of residual sugar, especially when being asked to match spicy barbecue

Curiously, however, Asimov overlooks what I regard as the obvious candidate; namely, sparkling shiraz. As I’ve written before:

When Helen and I were in Australia last summer, we found many wonderful wines, but our favorite discovery was the sparkling Shiraz we first tasted at Domaine Chandon. It was a revelation: a red wine made into a champagne-style sparkling wine.

I don’t understand why this style of wine isn’t in huge demand in the United States. It offers the cold bubbles we love in cola drinks; indeed, some taste just like cherry cola (albeit with a kick!). Also, it can be drunk far colder than most red wines (45 minutes in the refrigerator is ideal), which also should appeal to an American palate brought up on soft drinks. Yet most are vinified to produce dry wines (i.e., not sweet), so they match well with food.

Sparkling Shiraz is a true red wine, so those of us hoping the French paradox will stave off heart trouble ought to embrace it. It’s got intense berry flavors, far beyond any true Champagne, which matches nicely to the spicy food we love. In fact, if there is a better match for pork or chicken doused in barbecue sauce, I haven’t found it. The bubbles - along with a healthy dose of acids and round tannins - scrub your palate clean, which makes it a great match not only for BBQ but also greasy foods like pepperoni pizza.

Although the froth signals a fun wine, most are serious wines that offer the connoisseur all the intellectual pleasure of a quality still red wine. If you pay attention, the difference between a sparkling Shiraz sourced from the Barossa Valley and one made from Yarra Valley grapes become apparent with experience.

There is no reason why US wineries couldn’t make great sparkling red wines. After all, we’re making great Syrah in places like California and Washington, which would make fine sparkling Shiraz. Besides which, there was a time when California’s own Zinfandel routinely was made into champagne style white wines (and some wineries still do so, especially Beringer). Why not turn red Zinfandel wine into our sparkling red wine? I just don’t get it.

Meanwhile, my friend Tom Smith commented on Asimov’s article as follows:

In Southern Italy a couple of summers ago, I drank local red wines served nice and cold.  It’s hot there in the summer, and you want it cold.  Beer can be too fizzy when it’s really hot, and while a crisp chardonnay is always welcome, sometimes red is just what you want.

Here‘s how to do it if you are a wine enthusiast, the New York Times way.  Or, just get a high quality box wine like this, fill an old fashioned glass with ice, and pour on the merlot or the cab.  Or just keep the box in the fridge.  Box wine is the future I tell you, the future! Spend money on the wine, not the fancy bottle and graphic arts marketing consulting PRBS.  Anyone who sniffs at you probably doesn’t really like wine.  Just drink it before the ice melts.

If you’re going to use ice to cool your red wine, which I don’t recommend, because the ice will start melting immediately and start diluting the wine, either make yourself a pitcher of sangria or get yourself one of those ice tea pitchers with a separate compartment for ice. That way you get the chill without the dilution.

As for boxed wine, I remain puzzled why it is so hard to find fine wine in boxes in the USA. This is another area where the Australians are way ahead of us. They’ve embraced screwcaps, discarding cork closures and the 5% probability that the bottle of wine will be contaminated with TCA. They’ve also embraced box wine. Indeed, I’ve seen statistics that more than 50% of Aussie wine is drunk out of boxes. Nor are they drinking plonk. To be sure, I doubt whether you’ll find Grange in a box, but a lot of top Australian wineries produce very high quality wine in a box.

I love the idea of wine in a bag in a box:

The chief advantage to bag-in-a-box packaging is that it prevents oxidation of the wine during dispensing. After opening, wine in a bottle is oxidized by air in the bottle which has displaced the wine poured; wine in a bag is not touched by air and thus not subject to oxidation until it is dispensed. Cask wine is not subject to cork taint or spoilage due to slow consumption after opening.

It makes having a glass or two with dinner a lot easier.

One final thought on chilling red wine from my op-ed:

When the rule that red wine should be served at “room temperature” arose, the rooms people were talking about were the drafty dining rooms of English manors. Central heating and global warming were centuries in the future, so room temperature meant something in the vicinity of 60-65 degrees. Even today, most red wines taste best when served at around 60 degrees. Below that temperature, many begin to taste sharp, as fruit flavors mute and as tannins and acids predominate. (The lighter bodied reds we’ve been discussing here being an exception, as they are usually better slightly colder, say mid-50s). If you’re served a wine that is too cold, just let it warm in the glass.

In the US these days, of course, you’re far more likely to encounter a red wine served at 70+ degrees. At that temperature, the alcohol starts to volatilize and you experience a hot sensation on both the nose and palate. The solution is simple, but requires confidence. Ask for an ice bucket and stick the red wine in it for 10 minutes or so to knock the edge off. You will almost certainly face anything from condescension to non-cooperation. After all, you’re dealing with barbarians—if the staff and management knew anything about wine, they’d serve red wines at a proper temperature. But it’s your bottle and you can do what you like. And next time, go someplace where they treat wine with the respect it deserves.

The last time I ran into one of these situations and the server balked at bringing an ice bucket, I shifted into my most pompous professorial manner and gave him a lecture on the history of the concept of “room temperature.” I then asked him to send me the manager so that I could give him a piece of my mind about the disrespect they showed their wines. Sometimes being a wine snob can be a public service.