The unwritten rule has always been to store your white wine in the fridge, and your red wine out. But we've got some news for you - doing this could actually be ruining the taste of your precious vino.
Joe Fattorini, presenter of ITV’s The Wine Show, told Good Housekeeping that in order to make your wine taste the best it can, we should all be following the “20:20” rule.
The rule states that white wines should come out of the fridge 20 minutes before serving, and red wines should go in the fridge 20 minutes before serving.
But why?
“Many of us are serving our whites too cold, and red too warm,” he revealed.
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"Unfortunately, many of us are serving whites too cold, killing the fruit, while serving red too warm, meaning the alcohol is exagerrated and the tannins bitter," Joe adds.
Over chilling white wine means you run the risk of erasing the flavours of the fruit, while the higher the temparture of red wine, the more alcoholic it will be (which isn't a good thing).
Philippe Larue from wine merchants L'Art du Vin agrees with the 20:20 rule, revealing restaurants would usually serve red wine between 13-14°C and white wine between 7-12°C.
"One of the fiercest battles in the wine world is white wine being served too cold and red wine too warm. It’s a constant bugbear for us in the industry," he told us.
"I’m an advocate of the 20:20 rule. It allows the wine to reach the optimum temperature and for the flavours of both white and red to be enhanced."
"Often people will not have had the chance to try wine at its optimum temperature so they don’t know any better. It’s all down to personal taste really – if you like red warm, so be it but if you’re drinking either white or red at the correct temperature, there is much more balance, the fruit is more apparent and the alcohol is not as in your face. You get the best out of the bottle if it’s at the right temperature."
And it’s not just the 20:20 rule that helps keep the optimum wine temperature - how you store your wine can help too.
Joe isn’t a fan of ornamental wine racks and suggests moving your wine somewhere cool and dark.
“Varying temperatures makes the wine expand and contract in the bottle and eventually it can suck air through the cork and ruin the wine,” he warns.
And if that's not possible, Good Housekeeping's wine expert Alexandra Hale recommends at least moving your wine stash away from any warm spots.
"Heat speeds up the development of wine (both opened and sealed)," she adds. "So having an open bottle in the kitchen near an oven or radiator will mean it deteriorates more quickly.’
So next time you go to pour your white straight from the fridge, give it 20 minutes and you probably won't regret it...
MORE: RUINING YOUR VINO? HERE’S HOW YOU SHOULD REALLY BE STORING YOUR WINE
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