Serving Wine

Wine Glasses
As important as wine serving temperatures is the type of wine glasses in which wines are served. The shape of a wine glass can impact the taste of the wine, and for this reason different types of wine are served in different glasses.

The three main types of wine glasses are:

• White wine glasses: tulip shaped
  Red wine glasses: more rounded and have a larger bowl
  Sparkling wine flutes: tall and thin.

A suitable all-purpose wine glass should hold 10 oz, be transparent to allow the taster to examine the colour of the wine and its body, and have a slight curve in at the top to hold in the bouquet. While an all-purpose wine glass is fine for serving a red wine, do not serve a white wine in a red wine glass.

Wine Serving Temperatures
The temperature at which a wine is served has an immense impact on its taste. Serving wine cool will mask some imperfections - good for young or cheap wine - while a warmer wine temperature allows expression of the wine's characteristics - best with an older or more expensive wine.

A bottle of wine will cool 2 °C (4 °F) for every ten minutes in the refrigerator, and will warm at about this same rate when removed from the refrigerator and left at room temperature - the temperature of the room will affect the speed with which the wine warms up. If you need to chill a bottle of wine in a hurry, 35 minutes in the freezer will do the trick.