I’m Hannah from Majestic Wine in Macclesfield. I’m going to talk to you a little bit about the temperature to serve your wines at. First of all, if it’s a hot summer’s day, you get back from work, you want to a nice chilled bottled of wine, something like a Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc, also with sparkling wines and champagne, need to be really cold. They’re crisp, they’re light, they need to be chilled to come alive and just be refreshing.
Not all white wine needs to be really chilled. Something like Chardonnay, one of my favourites, I don’t like it to chilled. They can be quite complex, lots of fruit as well as the nutty, creamy, hazelnutty flavours that you get. Something like that, I just put in the fridge for about half an hour. If it was too cold it would be refreshing and you’d get the fruit but not the whole complexity. Quick tip if you want to get it chilled down even quicker. Take the top off, unscrew it or take the cork out, and then pop it in the fridge. That will just speed up the whole process.
Red wines, you want them at room temperature. That is because all the fruit flavours in the wine need to come alive. You need to warm it up. It softens the tannins a little bit. It just opens up the complexity of the wine. Pinot Noir and Beaujolais, which is made from the Gamay grape, they’re both great varieties with really thin skins. The tannins are low. They’re very fruit dominated so they work slightly chilled as a refreshing alternative in the summer, really fruit driven. To sum that up, white wines: all chilled. Red wines: mostly room temperature, but for a nice alternative, try a Pinot Noir or a Beaujolais lightly chilled in the summer.
Find all these wines and shop online at https://www.majestic.co.uk