How Cold Affects Your Wine and What You Can Do About It

Wine may experience certain detrimental impacts from the wintertime. The wine expands when exposed to freezing temperatures because the water in it starts to freeze. This can force the cork out of the bottle by altering the volume and pressure within.  The bottle may fracture as a result of the expansion, seriously harming it. Wine can undergo physical changes as a result of cold weather, such as the beginning of the creation of tartrate crystals, those minuscule wine diamonds that can form on the cork. The good news is that tartrate crystals are completely natural, won’t change the flavour, and are interesting to look at. Keeping your wine in a wine storage cabinet will help keep your wine at the correct temperature. Knowing the different wine varieties is the first step to understanding wine.

What happens if wine freezes

If the wine bottle is exposed to extremely low temperatures for an extended period of time, the liquid within may expand as it freezes, which might put a strain on the cork or perhaps cause the bottle to break at temperatures between 15 and 20 degrees Fahrenheit, wine freezes. If your bottle has shattered, you’ll know it, but if the cork has been damaged, it might not be as obvious. Your wine may age prematurely as it warms up again and introduces some oxygen back into the bottle. So be on the lookout for any leaking indicators, such as sticky cork or wine stains beneath the capsule. Even if there was a small amount of leaking, only by opening the bottle and tasting the wine could you determine if or how it affected the beverage. Placing wine in a wine cooler will moderate the temperature control of wine.

Cold affects the taste of wine

In the end, it’s important to serve wine at the proper temperature. And here is why. You will enjoy your wine to the fullest extent if you serve it at the correct temperature. Serving it too warmly or coldly might significantly alter the wine’s flavour. This is partially a result of how a wine’s scent and taste interact in your nose. Additionally, the temperature of the wine has a big impact on the wine’s aroma. For this reason, white wines are typically served at a cooler temperature than red wines, which are typically high in tannin. On the other side, acidity becomes more apparent at higher temperatures. Low-acid red wines should be served warmer than high-acid white wines. Thus, a key factor in how we perceive the structure of a wine is how temperature affects how tannin, acid, and, ultimately fruit flavours are perceived. Because fewer volatile chemicals will be released from a cold wine, it will have less of an aroma. On the other hand, a warmer wine will more readily release these chemicals, allowing you to appreciate the aroma fully.

Fortunately, all wine varieties are affected by temperature in a similar way, making it feasible to use the following rule to determine the ideal serving temperature: the warmer the wine should be served, the thicker the tannin structure and the lower the acidity. Wines with high acidity and low tannin content should be served colder to maximise cooling. The temperature range often ranges from 8° C for the more acidic white wines up to 18° C for the seriously complex and older reds, which is a little cooler than the ordinary house or restaurant.