Wine & Cellar Temperatures

We don’t have a fancy wine cellar, but we do have a basement room which stays in the mid 50s in winter and the mid 60s in summer. In winter, we bring a few bottles of red up at a time so we have a selection for each evening’s meal that is closer to 65-70, which is our preferred red drinking temperature. In summer, we just leave everything in the “wine room” until we’re ready to select a bottle. For whites, we keep age-worthy wines (big Chardonnays, Hungarian Tokaji, some German Rieslings) in the “cellar” and our everyday drinking whites in a second refrigerator in our studio/cabin. When drinking whites, we usually prefer them when they’ve been out of the fridge for about 10-15 minutes, but we’re not sticklers. Sometimes we like certain whites crisply cold, other times almost up to cellar temperatures. When in doubt, experiment.