Summer cool 12 February 2008

We generally drink our wines too cold or too warm.... plus some thoughts on jerepigo and ice-cream from Tim James in his latest Noseweek column

It’s rather shameful to admit smugness as one of summer’s many pleasures – even if it does come way down the list of innocent joys like going barefoot, over-indulging in the succeeding waves of luscious fruit, or marvelling at the vivid colour change undergone by pale foreigners on the beach…. 

But when reading the advice of well-bundled wine critics in wintry Europe and America about making glühwein, or about blood-warming burgundy and port, and remembering how cold and damp it is up there now, I exult (with that edge of smugness and even schadenfreude) in the idea and practice of cool wine in the delicious midday shade or the liquid equivalent of the freshness wafted in with the dusk of a hot day’s end.

Just how cool, though, should the wine be? An audiophile friend tells me that the easiest and cheapest way to improve a hi-fi system is to get better electric cables joining it all together. It might well be that the cheapest way to improve one’s wine drinking is to serve the stuff at a suitable temperature. For most people, judging by what I notice in private houses and (more culpably) in most restaurants, that would involve a simple enough adjustment: whites wines a little less cold, and red wines definitely a little less warm.

More-or-less cellar temperature for white wines, room temperature for reds is reasonable advice – and usually Eurocentrically meaningless. Unless, of course, you have a cellar reliably at about 12 degrees Centigrade and a room five or six degrees warmer. Like most people, I have neither, so a little adjustment via the fridge is usually required for cooling – warming is not a problem right now. 

Reds first. Surely one of the reasons people tend to avoid them on a warm summer’s day is that, served at about 25º, they’re just not very nice; the more alcoholic ones, especially, are all out of balance, both thin and giving a spiritous, burning sensation as the alcohol volatilises. An hour in the fridge – or rather less in ice-cold water in an ice-bucket bucket, a much more efficient way to cool it rapidly - will bring out any silky suppleness that might be lurking in the bottle. In fact, while it’s not a good idea to be too dogmatic about these things, red wine should never be served at much more that 18º to show at its best.

That’s the ideal for the more serious end: much cooler than that and the mouth-puckering astringency of the tannins will become increasingy apparent. Lighter reds (shading into rosé at the extreme), with little wood influence and not much in the way of tannic structure are the best candidates for more serious cooling: ask the steakhouse to give you an ice-bucket for the Chateau Libertas or Beyerskloof Pinotage, and you’ll enjoy it that much more, I promise (even if you get some strange looks), and won’t need to shift to beer or white wine to get refreshment.

As for whites, the ones to take care of not over-chilling are, again, the more serious examples: good chardonnays, and ambitious oaked chenin blancs and blends (Adoro, Solms-Delta Amalie, Scali, Columella, and the like). Cooler than fine reds, yes – but straight from a long sojourn in the fridge is fine for a lettuce, but way too cold for most wine. Simpler, sweeter or more bubbly whites can benefit from more chilling, without having their expensive delicacy thwarted by cold.

Served a wine too warm and you’re stuck with it, so erring on the cold side is preferable, as the wine will warm up once poured (cupping the bowl of the glass in your hand will sped it along). This, incidentally, is another reason not to fill your glass too full: not only will the aromas escape too easily, but constantly replenishing a smaller serving will help keep things cool.

And if you find yourself on a hot summer’s day with only a muscadel or jerepigo demading to be drunk, don’t despair – chill the hell out of it and sip it happily; or pour some over ice-cream. Memorably, and probably not repeatably, last summer I did the latter trick with KWV’s 1953 Jerepigo, surely the Cape’s most gloriously decadent sweet fortified wine ever; it took the ice-cream in its graceful stride, the flavours and richness scarcely diminished. The current Monis Muscadel (which they recommend chilling) is not quite the same, but it’s good enough for haunting echoes of lush pleasure.

• This article first appeared in Noseweek, 'South Africa's unique investigative magazine'