Red wine served too warm

The convention that red wine is served at room temperature dates from houses without central heating, where a room was around 15–18°C. A modern living room is 20–22°C, and a red wine served at that temperature is noticeably worse than the same bottle four degrees cooler.

What goes wrong is specific. Alcohol becomes more volatile as it warms, so a warm red smells spirity and tastes hot at the back of the throat; the fruit turns stewed; and the structure that should frame it goes slack. Nothing about the wine has changed except how much of it you can perceive.

The fix is to put the bottle in the fridge for fifteen to twenty minutes before serving. Almost every red wine improves, and lighter reds — Beaujolais, Loire Cabernet Franc, most Pinot Noir — improve dramatically.

The wine will warm in the glass anyway. Serving a red slightly cooler than you want it to be drunk is the way to have it right for more than the first sip.