As the temperature outside becomes more autumnal, people start artificially heating their homes and the subject of what temperature wine should be served at comes up again. Time after time I am told I have my red wines too cold, especially when I do tastings in the farm shop. Red wine should be served at 'room temperature'. Nowadays people heat their houses to anything from 19° - 25°C, and so understand room temperature to mean that, when actually that is too warm.

Ideally a red wine should be served at about 18°C - room temperature in Victorian times when the phrase was coined. And a white wine shouldn't be served straight from the fridge, as this is far too cold. It should be served around 10°C.

With all the wines I sell, I intentionally taste them at the 'wrong' temperature, to check the wines stand up to this test. I make sure my whites still taste good at room temperature, and that my reds are ok cooler than might be deemed correct in UK terms.

And on that note, UK terms for the correct temperature for red wines are very different to southern European terms. In France, Spain and Italy it is totally normal to chill a red wine and to serve it from the fridge. Wine snobs in the UK seem to get terribly upset about this, and yet who are we Brits to comment when we produce so few red wines?