By visiting the Andre website, you affirm that you are of legaldrinking age in country where the site is being accessed.Become a wine expert (Part 2): Serving temperature for white wine White wines are often served too cold, which is a problem.  When served too cold, many delicious fruit, mineral, floral, and citrus flavors will be undetectable during tasting. For refreshing whites (Sancerre, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, Torrontes, Albariño, etc.) the correct serving temperature lies between 37 degrees Fahrenheit and 43 degrees Fahrenheit.  With "refrigerator temperature" usually at about 34 degrees Fahrenheit, these wines can usually be served right away as they will warm in the glass.  With bigger, more complex whites (Chardonnay, Viognier, and White Burgundy - which is Chardonnay) the correct serving temperature approaches "cellar temperature" which is around 55 degrees Fahrenheit. The next time you open a "bigger" white like Chardonnay, Viognier, White Burgundy, Roussanne, or Marsanne, try pulling the bottle out of the refrigerator 30 minutes prior to serving to let it warm and open up a little bit. 

Take note of the greater variety of delicious flavors.  Also, if you are served a wine that is too cold, you can place the glass in the palm of your hand and use your body heat to warm it and release more flavor - I go into that a little deeper in my post on "how to hold a wine glass."  or hit me up on twitter (@bobfwilson) Cheers!I remember the first time I tasted sake, and sushi for that matter, back when I was in college in the 80s. A friend who studied in Japan took me to a sushi bar on Irving Place in Manhattan, where he introduced me to raw fish on rice and sake served as hot as a steaming mug of coffee. I didn't know much about sake at the time; I thought it was some generic tipple -- and in fact, most sake available at the time was indeed low-caliber. Fast forward a decade or so, as premium, small-batch sakes began filtering in from Japan, amazing brews as deep and sublime as the finest wines. But now, I was told, to savor these delicate brews refrigerator-cold. So hot sake was bad sake, and cold sake was good sake?

Well, not so fast. I thought about my initial encounters with sake, and attendant questions, as I listened to a fascinating and immensely useful seminar last week at the Japanese Culinary Center, called "Sake Temperatures: How Hot Is Too Hot?" I was thrilled that Mr. Nori Kanai, the founder of Mutual Trading (which runs the center) gave the presentation. First, a little bit about Mr. Kanai, a spry 87-year-old: (a) he's a legend, (b) he's the man responsible for introducing sushi to the West and (c) he was just anointed a "Living National Treasure" by Emperor Akihito for his life's work promoting Japanese food culture around the world. best bottle of wine under 10(By the way, Mr. Kanai credits his vitality to eating soba for breakfast every morning. best wine for cheese pizza Mr. Kanai explained that sake was originally consumed for religious purposes. best wine store texas

By the Edo Period (the 1600s), it became a popular beverage that was enjoyed... drum roll... warm. Warm like the temperature of your body. And not too cold, which was considered bad manners. Warm sake is called kanzake in Japanese. When Mr. Kanai arrived to America in the mid-50s, the sake that was generally available, the cheapo stuff, was typically imbibed piping hot. Perhaps "warm" got translated into "hot," because, hey, if warm was good, wouldn't hotter be better? what is the best wine for red meatSomehow hot sake became the norm across America, like at the joint on Irving Place where I first tried it.best beer and wine for wedding So what's the right temperature to drink sake? best snack food with wineAs Mr. Kanai explained, it really depends on the particular kind of sake (now that we have such a bounty of incredible sake available).

He noted eight temperature ranges, but as a rule of thumb, he said you can't go wrong with drinking any sake at room temperature. Here are a couple of other general guidelines: Fragrant sake like gingo or daigingo: Drink chilled, around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, but don't drink it cold, which will kill the delicate aroma and taste (like drinking white wine too cold). Unpasteurized sake (namazake): Drink it a little cooler, in the 41-50 degree range, to bring out its crisp, fresh taste. Rich sake like junmai or honjozo: These are perfect served room temperature or warm -- kan. Body temperature (98 degrees) up to 110 degrees. (Perfect with hot pot, by the way.) I watched the gang at the Japan Culinary Center heat sake, which was also instructive: They heated it in a water bath to get it to the right temperature. Now, of course, we didn't just talk about sake, but tasted as well. Here Rick Smith of Sakaya weighed in with a few favorite selections: Suigei Tokubetsu Junmai, which is fantastic warm, Dassai 50 Junmai Daiginjo, best served chilled, and Kikusui Hanjozo, enjoyed chilled or at room temperature.

The upshot is that you can enjoy great high-quality sake warm, room temperature or chilled. But not too hot, or not too cold. And now that it's miserably cold in New York City, I'm ordering a kanzake junmai the next time I dine Japanese. That'll do the trick. (Thank you for your incredible lecture, Mr. Kanai.) Posted by Harris Salat in Sake | Save & Share This storyFor me, choosing the right wine to serve on a particular occasion is almost as thrilling as the wine itself - perverse as that may seem. It gives me real pleasure to feel that the bottle, or bottles, have been just right for the circumstances, the people, the time, and any food that's served at the same time. Slowly, as I have learnt more about wine, I have learnt a little more about this aspect of wine appreciation, which is by no means a modern phenomenon. In the first century BC the Latin poet Horace wrote extensively about the art of matching wine to guest and occasion. And it is an art. It is by no means the single most important thing about wine.

It is hardly catastrophic to serve a wine that jars with your main course, or your guests’ tastes or expectations, but a few simple considerations can ensure that you maximise your own and your friends’ enjoyment, and that the money you spend on wine is spent most effectively. It is usually a waste, and entirely inappropriate, for example, to think that the more you spend on wine, the more it will please. Typically, the most expensive bottles in a wine shop are tough little babies in terms of their evolution: mute, scrunched-up bundles of ingredients that have many years' bottle maturation before they will begin to prove, in mellow middle age, why they were worth paying through the nose for. And there is a place and a time for everything - even the fanciest bottle of wine. I shall never forget that the first time I ever tasted the fabulous Château Cheval Blanc 1947 was at an outdoor lunch in a sunny Suffolk garden where the breeze playfully wafted into the hot, blue sky every nuance of its subtle bouquet.

A well-chilled, flavourful dry rosé would probably have been just the thing for this outdoor lunch - and yet it would probably taste extremely dreary at an urban dinner party in midwinter. Other examples of the right bottles in the wrong place include: Mosel Riesling with hearty stews New Zealand Sauvignon served to any but the most cosmopolitan native of Sancerre Tough, tannic young reds served to wine debutantes Châteauneuf-du-Pape drunk in midsummer in Châteauneuf-du-Pape (or indeed most full-bodied, alcoholic reds in the heat of the summer that is responsible for that alcohol) It is worth trying to match a wine's: people - take account of the individual's likes, dislikes, prejudices, and capacities for alcohol occasion - whether it's the most casual encounter or a formal celebration may influence the most appropriate price level weather - the ambient temperature and humidity level can have an enormous effect on what sort of wines taste best (see below)

time of day - may be a significant factor as far as alcohol intake is concerned place - inside or outside? is more than one wine appropriate, or feasible? food - see Wine and Food for more on this. Temperature - the crucial element It is impossible to over-estimate the effect of serving temperatures on how a wine will taste. Serving a wine at the most flattering temperature may seem absurdly high-falutin' and precious as an activity, but it really can transform ink into velvet and, conversely, zest into flab. (Unlike the wine itself, it need not cost anything either...) The principles are delightfully simple: 1. The cooler the wine the less it will smell. 2. The warmer the wine the more smelly it will be. 3. Low temperatures emphasise acidity, bitterness and tannin. 4. High temperatures minimize them. The corollary of rule 1 is that if you find yourself with a wine that tastes (i.e. smells) truly horrid, but you have to serve or drink it, then chill it to pieces.

(If it's a full-bodied red such as Shiraz, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, Châteauneuf du Pape, Barolo, it could be difficult to pull this off - you'll just have to boil off the flavour and serve it, with added spice and sugar, as mulled wine.) Rule 1 also means that the more naturally aromatic a wine (Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Franc, Gamay for example), the cooler you can afford to serve it - a useful observation if you need the refreshment of a cool drink. Sparkling wines also suit low temperatures, which slow the release of carbon dioxide. Sparkling wines served too warm can be unpleasantly frothy. Rule 2 means that full-bodied wines, as above, whose natural extract tends to make it difficult for flavour molecules to escape to deliver messages to the olfactory area, can be served much warmer than lighter wines. This applies every bit as much to whites as to reds. The limit to this rule is reached when the serving temperature rises above 20 °C and an increasing proportion of compounds are literally boiled off.

Rule 3 means that you can make a flabby wine taste infinitely better by chilling it a little. Thus, all but the most perfectly balanced sweet wine benefit from being chilled, as do many red burgundies, and soft red wines such as beaujolais which could do with a bit of artificially encouraged structure. Rule 4 is particularly useful because it means that young tannic or bitter red wines, and also the full-bodied ones listed above, which would seem almost hideously tough when served slightly cool, can be immeasurably improved by serving them on the warm side. NB Throughout, rosés behave as slightly fuller bodied equivalent whites.The ideal cellar temperature of around 15°C falls within the preferred temperature range for the service of most red wines as well as the more complex, full-bodied whites. In cooler climates, it may be difficult to warm a bottle of red wine to a suitably high service temperature. In these circumstances, the wine may be poured into a decanter warmed with hot water prior to service.