An Easy Guide to Serving Wine

Written by Aariana Adams

Here’s a quick reference guide to ready your wine service for an evening with family and friends:

Serving Order:
Begin with the lowest alcohol wine and move toward the highest alcohol wine. The alcohol content is on the label. In general, a dinner wine is about 12.5% alcohol. By law, dinner wines can be as low as 7% alcohol and as high as 14% alcohol.

Serve younger wines before older wines. Lower alcohol wines are generally younger (and considered lighter). Higher alcohol dinner wines, (13%-14%), generally, need more time in the bottle for aging.

Serve from dry to sweet (ending with dessert wine). While Chenin Blanc, Johannesberg Riesling, Semillon or White Zinfandel are considered “sweeter” when compared to Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc, they are considered dry when compared to dessert wines like French Sauternes, a Port or a Late Harvest wine.

Wine, as with food, should grow in robust and spicy flavors as the evening progresses, just as salty dishes are served before sweet.

It’s easy to shop for medium or full-bodied wines, as most dinner wines fall into those categories, but lighter-styled wines are another matter. Here are a few examples:

Lighter-styled white dinner wines: American Rieslings, Pinot Gris, Soave, Frascati, Trebbiano, Orvieto, Verdicchio

Lighter-styled red dinner wines: Valpolicella, Bardolino, Dolcetto and Beaujolais (except for Moulin-A-Vent, Morgon, Chenas, Julienas and Regnie).

When serving Chardonnay and/or Sauvignon Blanc both with appetizers and the entré, choose a lighter-bodied, unoaked, wine with a “fruitier” taste. Move to a “bigger” Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc for the main course. Your local retailer can guide you to differing styles.

Temperature:
Temperature is important. Very cold wines lose their fruit and body. With the exception of Champagne and sparkling wine, whether white or red, “cold” wine will never be remembered for the wine – the cold diminishes the grape’s character.

Optimum temperature for most white wine is 45ºF. The finest French white Burgundies should be chilled to only 48°F-50ºF.

Young red wines and lighter-styled red wines drink best at about 54ºF. Full-bodied reds should be served at a cool room (cellar) temperature of about 60ºF to 65ºF.

Champagne and sparkling wines are served at 45°F-47F°, but lesser quality, sweeter varieties can benefit from a temperature lower than 45°F but no lower than 42°.

Glassware:
For dinner wine, bigger is always better – a 10 to 12-ounce glass is good for both red and white wine. When using a 10-ounce glass, keep the serving to about 4 ounces or no more than 5 ounces. If you want to distinguish a white wine glass from the red wine glass, use a shorter stem for the white wine, but keep the bowl size to 10 to 12-ounces. If you have 8-ounce glasses on hand, use them for white wine, pouring less than 4 ounces and invest in a larger glass for red wine, if possible.

Serve Champagne or sparkling wines in a tall slender flute glass. This artful glass retains and displays the beautiful bead of bubbles. The “old style” Champagne glass, with the wide shallow bowl and the large surface area, releases the bubbles prematurely.

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