By Daniel Eddy, July 2008

Another summer of grotesque Florida heat, and here I am, a red wine lover and I’m already sweating jeroboams. What can we do beside stripping and imbibing directly in front of the air conditioning vent with our feet in a bucket of cold water? I know, nice image. 

Well, we could chill the wine and not ourselves, but that’s just not what we’re taught to do with reds, right? Yet a little cool is not ice cold, and so much better than hot or just lukewarm. One of my consistent complaints concerning wine service in Florida restaurants remains the serving of warm reds. “Room temperature” should never be 80 degrees for a red wine. We are aiming for room temperature in a wine cellar, about 60 - 65 degrees. Since most of our restaurants and homes are not kept a cool 65 degrees, we might need to chill our reds just a quarter of an hour in the fridge to take the sultry edge off of the wine. You can ask your server to do that for you and even though he may look at you strangely, it will make the entire experience much more pleasurable.

What’s so bad about hot wine? Any wine that is not at optimum temperature will not reveal its true strengths. When a wine is warm, we taste the alcohol first and foremost and lose some of the subtler mineral tones or riper fruit notes. As with Goldilocks we really want the wine temperature to be “just right” since too cold, though refreshing in temperature, dumbs down the flavor profile. Hence, my second biggest pet peeve about Florida restaurants: serving the whites too cold, losing much of their complexity. A little chill in this heat can go along way and make your investment in the wine more worthwhile. Some reds, usually very light reds with lower tannins like gamay Beaujolais, are often served a bit chilled, like Beaujolais nouveau, so we have a precedent. What other reds do we chill? Aussie sparkling shirazes are served chilled, being a bubbly, so that can be a cool alternative, but they are often fruity sweet and sharply dry at the same time, with frothy pink foam, so not quite as good a substitute for regular red wine flavors.

Let’s reconsider temperature and look to other low tannin red wines, served between 55 and 65 degrees, as alternative summer red options. Consider gamay’s close kin, pinot noir. From California, this red is often lighter and fruitier than its French counterpart in Burgundy. You can also consider pinots from New Zealand, Australia and Chile. The softer tannic acid refreshes during a heat wave. Pinot’s cherry tartness can make this more acidic wine a great partner with food, while still keeping the cheek-drying tannins to a minimum.

I’ve also noticed that reds from hot countries taste better in the heat. Varietals like monastrells from Spain or grenaches from France, make great choices for summer reds. These wines have a little more acidity than the usual American version, though they balance that acidity with a softer tannic structure. In grenaches we tend to get red currant or tart cherry flavors, and a bright acidity, but very little of the heavy wood flavors, which give me the hot flash. Monastrell, also known as mourvedre in France and California has a similar profile, finishing softer and with a little more elegant restraint than many of the New World “fruit bombs” with their high alcohol content and cheek-puckering tannins. These warm country wines, like Greek wines or Southern Italian wines, make good choices since their development and creation was in the warmer Mediterranean regions. Sometimes the colors of the wines are lighter and a little rust-tinged and if you have acid issues then you can always go back to white zinfandel, I won’t judge… much.

On that pink note, we can always try dry rosés, which are a great choice for red drinkers since they are dry. Red lovers appreciate the lack of residual sugar. The fuller aromas and bouquet make them a pleasurable alternative to flabby summer chardonnays. Look for European rosés from warmer climes along the Mediterranean in Spain, France and Italy. Tavel from the Southern Rhone, or pink versions of the Spanish grapes we’ve discussed, monastrell and garnacha, or rosés from Italy’s islands, Sardinia and Sicily are perfect choices. If you look domestically, make sure it doesn’t have a “white” before the varietal like “white merlots” or “white zins” as they will be sweet. Look for “rosé” or maybe “vin gris” on the label to know it’s not sweet pink. It’s always worth a question at the wine shop if you can’t abide the fruity flashbacks from high school.

If we rule out chilled bubbly reds like the sparkling shirazes, or sweet, red sparklers from Italy like Brachetto d’Acqui, which is sumptuous with a dark chocolate dessert, though a little cloyingly sweet on it’s own, then our choices are rosés or softly chilled lighter reds. What other option do we Florida oenophiles have besides taking up spelunking? Travel comes to mind and Alaska has access to amazing wines from Washington state and British Columbia coupled with a much cooler climate, but if gas priceprohibitive at least try to keep your reds cooler for summer.