How To Serve French Wine
To have a bottle of French wine for dinner is
not one of those momentous decisions which requires long
planning and great care of execution.
Only great and old wines need special
handling. If the bottle contains sediment (which is a mark of
old age. and far from being harmful to the wine. is rather a
sign of greatness) .then it should rest after transportation and
be left standing upright for a day or two, until the sediment
has dropped to the bottom of the bottle.
Then it may be decanted. Decanting is pouring
the wine slowly from the bottle into a
decanter, generally in
front of a light, in order to see that only wine free of
sediment is poured into the decanter
When old wine is not decanted, great care is
taken not to shake it and the last glasses are poured with
special attention in order to avoid any sediment entering the
glasses.
An enormous majority of French wines do not
have sediment and they are, therefore treated much more
casually. They can be picked up at a liquor store or taken from
a “home cellar" at practically the last minute.
The right Temperature
Bringing the wine to the right temperature is
not a long process because, what most people don’t realize, is
that wine taken from storage is already not too far from the
right temperature.
Red wines may need some "warming up", whites
and rosés some "cooling down", but both to a lesser extent than
is generally believed.
Red wine is drunk at what is called “room
temperature”. When the words room temperature (in French “chambré")
were coined centuries ago, dining-rooms were much cooler than
those of today. Huge rooms were heated only by a log fire and,
certainly, “room temperature” was never intended to mean the
temperature of our present-day, centrally-heated dwellings.
The right temperature for red wine is
about 15.5°C to 18°C (60° to 65°F). Regional and parish wines
may even be served a little cooler.
White and rosé wines are served
slightly chilled (around 10°C or 50°F) and one hour on the shelf
of the refrigerator will bring them to the right temperature.
Champagne and other sparkling wines
take longer to chill and are left in the refrigerator for a few
hours.
Champagne, as well as rosé and white wine,
may be kept on a lower shelf of the refrigerator.
General rules:
-
Young wines are served COOLER than old wines
-
Do NOT FORGET that wine heats up in the glass
during the meal
-
A wine served at between 6°C (43° and 46°F)
in a room having a temperature of 18°C (64°F) will reach a
temperature of 10° to 12°C (50° to 54°F) within about 10
minutes.
Mistakes to be strictly avoided
Mistakes with white wines:
-
Over-chilling or icing
-
Leaving in the refrigerator for over two hours
-
Using the freezing compartment or the freezer
-
Putting ice-cubes in the wine
Mistakes with red wines:
-
Over warming them : to "chambrer" a wine does not mean heating
it up
-
Putting a grand cru in a bucket of hot water
-
Placing the bottle on a radiator and then forgetting it
Mistakes with ALL wines:
A wine is always at its
best when it is
at the right temperature
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