I had lunch on a patio in the Byward Market a week or so ago and I chose a table in full sun, as I'm wont to do. I know it's a health risk and I know it doesn't do much for food and wine, either. Salads can droop quite quickly, things that shouldn't melt do ... and the wine warms up.
I was impressed that our server offered to pour half a glass of our bottle of wine at a time, and to keep the bottle inside, where it was cool, until we needed more. Alternatively, she could have provided a cooler, but her solution was just fine and we enjoyed our wine at a good temperature from first sip to last.
It's well worth remembering the importance of wine temperature now that the weather has started to warm up again (at last!). Wine that's served dramatically too cold or too warm doesn't taste or feel the way the winemaker intended, and you're just not getting your money's worth from it.
It's amazing how little attention many restaurants pay to wine temperature -- and how much their clients put up with. They won't accept a cold steak or a bowl of lukewarm gazpacho, or a glass of warm water or a cup of cold coffee. But they'll put up with whites so cold they hurt your teeth and reds that are so warm you don't feel any change of temperature in your mouth when you sip them.
In general, white wines are served too cold (straight from the fridge) and reds are served too warm -- often at room temperature when room temperature is about 20 degreesC. The spread between white and red is often about 15 degrees when it should only be five or six.
Read up on this topic, and you'll find advice to serve this white wine at 12 degreesC and that white wine at 14 degreesC. But no one, except the truly obsessive, is going to try to do that. Apart from anything else, even if you get the wine's temperature exactly right to start with, it's going to change in the hour or more you're drinking it.
As far as I'm concerned, a simple and effective guideline is that white wine should feel cold but not ice-cold in your mouth, and red wine should feel cool. Any warmer perception than these, and you should cool a red down -- or ask to have it cooled, if you're in a restaurant.
It's better to start off on the cold side, if necessary, as the wine will warm up fairly quickly in your glass.
And the temperature of your wine is important. It's not just a piece of snobbery. Whites that are too cold lack flavour (beware any wine with a label telling you to serve it "well chilled" -- they don't want you to taste it!) while reds that are too warm feel coarse.
When you're eating out and you're offered a taste of wine before it's poured, remember to check for temperature as well as for faults in the wine. A faulty wine is done for, but temperature can be corrected quite quickly.
Four Ontario wines today, all VQA classified. The two Trumpour's Mill wines, made in Prince Edward County, are available only at two LCBO stores: Rideau Street at King Edward Avenue, and on Merivale Road.