Refrigeration Can Elevate Red Wines (But There's A Catch)

If you don't know a whole lot about wine other than the fact that you like to drink it, choosing the right bottle can be tricky. You might pick the nicest-looking label, or you might go for the most familiar-sounding brand name. If your knowledge of wine begins and ends with the movie "Sideways," you might make a beeline for the pinot section, playing back Paul Giamatti's affecting paean to the delicate grape.

If you're on a budget, you'll choose any wine under $20. If you're lucky, that economical bottle will be perfectly drinkable. If you're not, it could end up sitting on your wine rack until it turns to vinegar. It doesn't have to be this way. 

Evan Ingram, the co-executive chef of the New Orleans sparkling wine lounge Effervescence, told Food & Wine that the best way to bring new life to an otherwise unremarkable bottle of red is to pop it in the fridge. In fact, Ingram says cheap wines actually taste better chilled than their fancy counterparts. 

Those who live in New York City or another part of the country that's experiencing an unseasonably warm winter in 2023 might already have their eye on spring and summer. For Evan Ingram, that can only mean one thing: chilled wine. Specifically, young red wine. When the weather is nice and a craving for cold vino strikes, the chef reaches for refrigerated bottles of Beaujolais, Gamay, and Nero d'Avola. "This trick can take inexpensive but nice quality red wines to another whole (refreshing) dimension," he says.

In fact, inexpensive wines that are aged in steel tanks actually taste better than fancy ones (which are typically aged in oak barrels) when chilled. Ingram says to avoid cabs and pinots that have a lot of tannins, as their complexities will be lost when chilled in the fridge. Here's the science behind why cheap red wine shines at cool temperatures.

Wine served at a temperature below 60 degrees Fahrenheit will taste different than it would if you opened it straight from your wine rack. Paola Embry, the wine director at Wrigley Mansion in Phoenix, tells VinePair that chilling wine will subdue and "tighten" its flavors, which comes in handy with cheap wine that, well, doesn't taste like a million bucks. By contrast, serving wine at 66 degrees Fahrenheit, or at room temperature, will "soften [its] structure" and make it taste more like alcohol and less like fruit juice. 

Again, this makes tannin-rich wines better suited to room-temperature pours. "Different red wines need respective temperatures to highlight their best attributes, especially in a matter of pairing with food," California sommelier Victoria Kulinich tells Insider. If keeping track of which wines to chill and which to serve at room temp sounds like too much work, rest assured that young, modestly priced reds are generally going to taste great out of the fridge.