Twenty minutes in the ice bucket, and a bottle you thought you knew becomes the best thing on the table.
Ask for a red slightly chilled and somebody usually looks worried. They should not. Room temperature is a rule from a century when rooms were about sixteen degrees, and modern dining rooms are nothing like that.
Which reds want it
The ones built on fruit and acid rather than tannin. Beaujolais from granite. Loire cabernet franc. A young pinot noir. Twenty minutes in ice, no more, and the fruit tightens up, the alcohol stops shouting, and it becomes a wine you can drink with fish.
Which do not
Anything with real structure. A Pauillac at cellar temperature is already where it wants to be, and chilling it makes the tannin taste like a mouthful of tea.
If you are eating the plateau and somebody at the table wants red, this is the answer to that argument.
Ask, and we will bring the bucket. Nobody here thinks it is strange.
Written at L'Étoile, the historic Snouder's Building, Oyster Bay.
