Serving temperatures

If wines are served too hot, they taste thin. In contrast, if wines are served too cold, they lack aroma and flavour. Recommended serving temperatures are often listed on the label.

White wines and sweet styles should be served lightly chilled, that is, around 14°C.

Dry reds should be served cool, that is, around 18°C. This means cooling in the fridge for an hour or half an hour in an ice bucket to take the edge off them.

Fortified wines can be served at room temperature. However, some prefer them at 0°C, that is, out of the deep freeze! In Queensland, room temperatures are usually above ideal serving temperature, hence the need for cooling. Restaurants commonly over-chill white wines and serve red wines too hot.

When tasting wines, the very first thing you do is look at the wine. What's the colour like? Dark? Light? Then you swirl it around the glass and sniff the wonderful aromas. Only then do you have a sip to savour the rich flavours. You really want to have whatever wine you're drinking at slightly less than room temperature because the aroma of the wine comes as it warms up.

Room temperature is the surrounding temperature. There's a huge difference in room temperature between the mountains in winter and the beach in summer. Listed below are good wine drinking temperatures.

Cork controversy

"This wine is corked!"

Cork is mostly produced in Portugal from the bark of old trees. It is a cottage industry and quality control is difficult. It is not easy to find other sources of cork because the trees have to be mature and Portugal is really the only country with productive trees in quantity... The mould is caused by a chemical called tri-chloro-anisole (TCA) which arises from the action of moulds naturally occurring in the tree bark combining with chlorine in the bleach used to sanitise the corks during production.

A "corked" wine is not a broken or crumbly cork... That is a temporary problem only, and once you have removed the bits of cork the wine is fine. Mould caused by TCA is invisible... another mould you see occasionally under the capsule on top of the cork, is caused by a bit of leakage. This mould is harmless and not related to TCA mould. If you see such a mould, simply wipe it off before pouring.

A "corked" wine has a taint which affects the aroma and taste of the wine... This happens when an invisible mould grows within the pores of the cork, then combines with traces of the bleach used in thje chlorine to treat the cork and this taints the wine... This is a severe, well-established taint, and the wine will smell like wet carpet or wet hessian sacks - it is a dreadful smell... A lightly corked bottle presents a bigger problem. The wine will smell flat and taste dull. There'll be no fruit nose and no fruit flavour. The average wine drinker will assume that this is how the wine is supposed to taste. The reputation of the winery suffers through something they have no knowledge of or control over... A no win situation.

The problem with the cork mould is that it is not able to be detected before bottling. Once the afflicted cork is rammed into the bottle and becomes wet, the mould taints the wine... It is not the fault of the wine and is a random fault affecting something like one in fifty bottles.

An obvious solution to the problem is to find an alternative closure to the cork... Currently this is where the most developments are occurring... However, the traditional cork does a very good job of sealing the bottle and finding a synthetic substitute is not easy. A corking machine will compress a cork to half its circumference for insertion in the bottle... after insertion it will immediately return to 85% of its normal volume and to 94% within 24 hours, and it is impervious to water... This elasticity and durability means that it can seal a bottle for a long period - 100 years or more, and it can be extracted easily.

Wineries now use synthetic corks by the millions, but it is also apparent from research carried out by the Australian Wine Research Institute that the synthetics are best suited to short term (approximately 6 to 12 months) storage of wines, as there is doubt over their ability to act as an adequate seal over longer time periods.

The cork industry has responded to the threat from synthetics by spending millions on research to find the cause and cure for cork taint. A chlorine free cork treatment process has been developed and this has helped greatly.

Although the occurrence of cork taint is definitely reduced when manufacturers replace the chlorine bath with other sterilization methods, it is still yet to be completely eradicated. Some scientists now believe that TCA is already present in the cork bark and that the usual methods of handling the wood are not sufficient to remove it... Cork manufacturers are working on new ways of treating cork with microwaves or ozone to prevent taint.

The use of the Stelvin closure (screw cap lids) is regarded as the best alternative to cork and would be widely used by the Australian wine industry if not for consumer resistance. The Stelvin is particularly suitable for aromatic wines (i.e. rieslings) and offers the user the chance of cellaring wine for many years without the inherent risk of cork-taint spoilage. Furthermore, the wine can be stored upright!

Fundamentally, cork is an ancient and romantic closure for wine but is far from efficient. For those who wish to cellar rare and expensive wine, the downside of losing up to one in twelve bottles from cork-taint is unacceptable. The Stelvin is a great alternative closure and its coming of age with consumers will certainly raise the bar for the cork industry!