Wine service: temperature, order, pouring

Most private dinners buy good wine and serve it badly. The two faults are temperature and timing: red too warm, white too cold, and the second bottle opened when the main course is already on the table. Both are free to fix and both change the evening more than an extra course would.

Temperature in practice

Whites and champagne come out of the fridge and rest ten minutes before pouring. Reds go into a cool room, or into an ice bucket for eight minutes if the house is warm, which sounds like heresy and is what every sommelier does in July. The target is 16 to 18 degrees for a structured red, 13 to 15 for something light, and both are below the temperature of almost every dining room in summer.

The pour

A dinner pour is 100 to 125 millilitres, which is a third of a large glass and looks modest. With a paired menu, pour 70 millilitres so that guests can taste eight wines and still walk. Pour from the right, label facing the guest, no towel wrapped around the bottle, and stop at the bottom of the curve. Refill before a glass is empty and never during a toast or a speech.

Decanting

Decant young, tight reds for an hour to open them up. Decant old wines only to remove sediment, then serve quickly, because a forty year old wine that has been standing in glass for an hour is a different and worse wine. Taste everything before it reaches the table: one bottle in twelve is faulty, and the moment to discover that is in the kitchen.

Hiring a sommelier for the evening costs less than one good bottle on many tables and removes every one of these problems. The drinks calculator works out the bottles, the ice and the glasses.

Mistakes

What goes wrong

Red wine at 21 degrees, which is the most common fault at private dinners
White wine straight from a fridge at 4 degrees, which tastes of nothing for the first ten minutes
Pouring all four glasses at once so three warm up
Serving the best bottle with the cheese, when the table has stopped noticing

Checklist

Every bottle tasted before service
Whites out of the fridge ten minutes before pouring
Reds cooled to 16 to 18 degrees, by bucket if needed
One person responsible for pouring all evening
Half a bottle per guest, plus reception champagne
Water on the table before the first wine

Questions hosts ask

How much wine per guest?

Half a bottle of dinner wine per guest, plus half a bottle of champagne per guest for a reception hour before it.

Should red wine ever be chilled?

Yes. Eight minutes in an ice bucket brings a red from a warm 21 degrees to a correct 17, which is where it should have been all along.

Planners

The arithmetic for this

Bottles, ice and glasses

Drinks Calculator

Champagne, wine, water, spirits, ice and the glass count for a reception, a dinner or both.

Open

Does this menu work?

Menu Composer

Build a menu course by course and see the balance: weight, technique, temperature, colour, repetition, oven conflicts and a wine suggestion for each course..

Open

Formats