Wine Temperature - the Fifteen Minute Rule

A post yesterday on the Life Begins at Sixty-Five blog reminded me of a tip I read recently, and brought into focus how it relates to boxed wine. I don't even remember where I read this tip, but it stuck with me because it was very simple. I'm calling it the Fifteen Minute Rule. The idea was that you take the white wine out of the refrigerator 15 minutes before serving; you put the red wine into the refrigerator 15 minutes before serving. The result is that, red, or white, the wine is tempered just about right for drinking.

This rule should work well for 750 ml bottles, but I suspect doesn't work so well for a boxed wine. The mass is too great, and the carboard box insulates too much for the temperature to change enough. But this brings me back to decanting, which I touched on two days ago in the Breathe Easy post. If I pour enough out of the box for the occasion at hand, and then put the decanter of red into the refrigerator (or the decanter of white onto the counter) for 10-15 minutes, I should get the desired result.

This is a nice excuse to buy more pretty decanters. This one pictured is spectacular! I think I'll go shopping!

technorati tags: boxed+wine, box+wine, wine+temperature, decant