I read an interesting article the other day that posed what seemed a simple question, that proved anything but. Why do we drink white wine chilled? I’ve always accepted that we do, but never really wondered why. The answer is not a technical one, and fairly obvious once you hear it.

Why do we drink wine in the first place? Most of us would say we drink wine to be refreshed. And, most of us would also agree that cold drinks tend to refresh us more than hot drinks. We should remember that wine originally was a substitute for water and most of us would prefer cold water to hot. So the not-so-obvious answer to the question is; we drink wines as cold as we can. That is, we drink them at the lowest temperature at which the characteristics of the wine are not compromised by the temperature.

So why do we drink white wines so much colder than red wines. The basic answer is that white wines can stand the cold better than red wines. Cold tends to suppress the production of aromas, but white wines depend less on aromas for flavor that reds. We drink white wines in smaller glasses than reds because we don’t need the big glass to concentrate the aromas and the smaller service area preserves the cooler temperature. White wines are also more acidic than red wines and many would agree that acidity is complemented by cooler temperatures.