Wine Serving Temperature

I'd rather wait for the bucket to take effect than dilute the wine, but if it's an unpretentious quaffer and, especially, is found to have more than 14%, it may not be such a bad idea after all.
 
Let’s do some math. A glass of wine at a restaurant (if the restaurant pours) is say 100-120 ml and an ice cube is about 8-10 ml. So we are talking roughly 10% dilution per ice cube. Not great but maybe acceptable as a trade to get a 100 ml glass of wine from room T at 68 F to roughly cellar T at 52 F with a single 10 ml ice cube. And yes I’ve used both metric and English units. Kindly deal.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Me too. Just put the bottle on the fridge. No need to water it down.
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Who said anything about a bottle? We were discussing ordering wine by the glass in a restaurant. Fridge or ice bucket? Maybe neither.
 
Do people really order a glass of rosé in a restaurant and have it arrive lukewarm? I only order glasses of rosé in France and they always arrive chilled. Jayson's math shows me I'd rather wait to get the wine chilled than dilute it to that extent, unless I was really just trying to dilute the taste.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Do people really order a glass of rosé in a restaurant and have it arrive lukewarm? I only order glasses of rosé in France and they always arrive chilled. Jayson's math shows me I'd rather wait to get the wine chilled than dilute it to that extent, unless I was really just trying to dilute the taste.
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No idea about how often rosé is served warm; I would imagine not often. But I do not think - possibly - that I have ever ordered a glass of red wine in a restaurant (well, actually, a couple of times) and have it arrive at anything close to an appropriate temperature.
 
originally posted by Jayson Cohen:
Let’s do some math. A glass of wine at a restaurant (if the restaurant pours) is say 100-120 ml and an ice cube is about 8-10 ml. So we are talking roughly 10% dilution per ice cube. Not great but maybe acceptable as a trade to get a 100 ml glass of wine from room T at 68 F to roughly cellar T at 52 F with a single 10 ml ice cube. And yes I’ve used both metric and English units. Kindly deal.
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Actually, 100-120 ml would be a very measly pour. In Europe, they list the size of the pour on the wine list, and I've never seen less than 12 cl, and often up to 15 if its a normal glass of wine (sometimes they have "tastes" that are smaller amounts). And that's minimum amounts, errors are going to be on the higher side, giving you a little extra. So we're talking 6-8% max dilution. Depends on the wine, whether that's acceptable, I guess, and I can think of some alcoholic monster wines where that dilution would be welcome Jesus units.

For those metrically challenged, a 12 cl glass is 4 oz., rather small for most pours in the US in my experience.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Do people really order a glass of rosé in a restaurant and have it arrive lukewarm? I only order glasses of rosé in France and they always arrive chilled. Jayson's math shows me I'd rather wait to get the wine chilled than dilute it to that extent, unless I was really just trying to dilute the taste.
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On a terrasse, it can be quite hot. In a restaurant, I don't know, but it's been offered.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
originally posted by Jayson Cohen:
Let’s do some math. A glass of wine at a restaurant (if the restaurant pours) is say 100-120 ml and an ice cube is about 8-10 ml. So we are talking roughly 10% dilution per ice cube. Not great but maybe acceptable as a trade to get a 100 ml glass of wine from room T at 68 F to roughly cellar T at 52 F with a single 10 ml ice cube. And yes I’ve used both metric and English units. Kindly deal.
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Actually, 100-120 ml would be a very measly pour. In Europe, they give you the size of the pour on the wine list, and I've never seen less than 12 cl, and often up to 15 if its a normal glass of wine (sometimes they have "tastes" that are smaller amounts). And that's minumum amounts, errors are going to be on the higher side, giving you a little extra. So we're talking 6-8% max dilution. Depends on the wine, whether that's acceptable, I guess, and I can think of some alcoholic monster wines where that dilution would be welcome Jesus units.d

For those metrically challenged, a 12 ml glass is 4 oz., rather small for most pours in the US in my experience.
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The pours I’ve seen in NYC lately have been getting a bit miserly at many places and are often listed as 4 oz. A “taste” is usually designated 2 oz. here. But your point is good that more wine, less dilution for the same ice cube. But also you need a bigger ice cube (about 14 ml for a 150 ml glass of wine) or more than one to get the same effect as I calculated above and must be careful about causing spillage on insertion and as it melts! So dilution is back up to near 10%.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
originally posted by Jayson Cohen:


For those metrically challenged, a 12 ml glass is 4 oz., rather small for most pours in the US in my experience.
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That would be small. 120 ml is about 4 oz. In the US, standard restaurant pours used to be 5-6 oz, never 4.
 
Fact checking Jayson’s math here, unapologetically using metric units. If we assume that the wine is at 25 C and you want to lower it to cellar temperature of 10 C, that’s a delta of 15 C. Our ice cube is coming out of the freezer at -20 C, so it has a delta of 30 C to reach the desired temperature. Assuming identical specific heats of water and wine (not a bad assumption), that means your ice cube would have to be half the volume of the wine, giving a 33% dilution. If the wine starts out at 20 and you want to reduce it to 13, then the ice cube would only have to be 21% the volume of the wine, resulting in a 17.5% dilution. If the ice cube isn’t at freezer temp but closer to its melting point, the situation worsens.

Mark Lipton
 
If I'm sitting on a terrace talking with friends or just people watching and the outside temperature is 30ºC (even hotter if I'm not in the shade), I'm not going to care about a little dilution to get my drink somewhat cooler (15º would be fine, but even 17-18º will be better than 25º). It's not like I'm drinking Tempier or Terrebrune and paying strict attention to it; it's more likely an anonymous Coteaux du Languedoc rosé or if I'm splurging an extra euro, an anonymous Côtes de Provence rosé. Minuty or Whispering Angel is about as upscale as you'll ever see at a café.
 
25-30 C wine is very warm. So Marc it’s not my math that is wrong; it’s my different assumption - of RT at 20 C. Maybe best case in this discussion where you all are talking about sweating in the sun on an exposed terrace.

And I did assume the ice at 0 C. So in that sense I was making a worst case assumption.
 
originally posted by MLipton:
Fact checking Jayson’s math here, unapologetically using metric units. If we assume that the wine is at 25 C and you want to lower it to cellar temperature of 10 C, that’s a delta of 15 C. Our ice cube is coming out of the freezer at -20 C, so it has a delta of 30 C to reach the desired temperature. Assuming identical specific heats of water and wine (not a bad assumption), that means your ice cube would have to be half the volume of the wine, giving a 33% dilution. If the wine starts out at 20 and you want to reduce it to 13, then the ice cube would only have to be 21% the volume of the wine, resulting in a 17.5% dilution. If the ice cube isn’t at freezer temp but closer to its melting point, the situation worsens.

Mark Lipton
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you are excluding the latent heat it takes to change 32 degree ice to 32 degree water. using ice to cool a drink is so effective because of all the heat the ice "absorbs" going from solid state to liquid state.

from Wikipedia:

"For example, when melting 1 kg of ice (at 0 °C under a wide range of pressures), 333.55 kJ of energy is absorbed with no temperature change."
 
originally posted by robert ames:
originally posted by MLipton:
Fact checking Jayson’s math here, unapologetically using metric units. If we assume that the wine is at 25 C and you want to lower it to cellar temperature of 10 C, that’s a delta of 15 C. Our ice cube is coming out of the freezer at -20 C, so it has a delta of 30 C to reach the desired temperature. Assuming identical specific heats of water and wine (not a bad assumption), that means your ice cube would have to be half the volume of the wine, giving a 33% dilution. If the wine starts out at 20 and you want to reduce it to 13, then the ice cube would only have to be 21% the volume of the wine, resulting in a 17.5% dilution. If the ice cube isn’t at freezer temp but closer to its melting point, the situation worsens.

Mark Lipton
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you are excluding the latent heat it takes to change 32 degree ice to 32 degree water. using ice to cool a drink is so effective because of all the heat the ice "absorbs" going from solid state to liquid state.

from Wikipedia:

"For example, when melting 1 kg of ice (at 0 °C under a wide range of pressures), 333.55 kJ of energy is absorbed with no temperature change."
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My calculations included it.

Heat capacities: wine ≈ 3.8 J/g·°C, water ≈ 4.18 J/g·°C
Latent heat of fusion of ice (L): 334 J/g

mass_wine*c_wine*(Ti - Tf) = m_ice*L + m_ice *c_water(Tf - 0degC)
 
The whole thing around caloric input for phase change (ie gas to liquid, liquid to solid) is pretty wild - huge amounts of energy are needed or given off to achieve those transitions.

In my world, people use phase change material for storing heat or cool in a small space. In NYC, many buildings are cooled use ice made during offpeak, late at night/early morning.
 
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