Do you drink (or serve) your red wines too warm? Are your white wines too cold? Whether you know it or not, the answer to both questions is probably yes. And while most of us don’t bother much with the temperature of our wines, a little extra attention to just how cold or warm your whites and reds are can go a long way in making them taste their best.

As the temperature of a wine increases, the aromas and flavours change, often dramatically. A wine that’s too cold is typically stingy in the aroma and flavour department, while a warmer wine is too generous — there’s no restraint and the flavours don’t come together quite right.

To put it another way, very cold wine tightens up while too-warm wine falls apart.

The former is typically a problem with white wines, while the latter is more an issue with reds. But while chilling a white and serving a red at room temperature is a good starting point, there are degrees — pun intended — of variation when it comes to hitting that sweet spot.

Try it yourself — pour a glass of wine, red or white, into a glass and leave it on the counter, then chill the same bottle for 15 (or 20 or 30) minutes and taste it against the room-temperature wine. You’ll notice certain flavour components will be accentuated in the warmer glass, and/or you’ll find the wine benefits from that time in the fridge.