As The Summer progresses, I am drinking more and more German Rieslings from QbA through Auslese. Everything that I have is young (2005 to 2009), and I am basically drinking straight out of the refrigerator. For me, I tend to like wines with RS to be a tad warmer than the drier wines.
What say you?
The lower the acid, the colder I want the wine.
+1.
Seems nearly every time I note a relatively low acidity in a German Riesling, I am able to somewhat change that perception by cooling it down more.
Other than that, Bill, I think I’m the opposite of you: I tend to think higher R.S. tends to handle cooler temperatures better than lower, R.S., everything else being the same.
Agreed on both counts.
I don’t tie it to pradikat level as much as I do characteristics. If it’s a little disjointed, or not as crisp (with lower acidity being a big player in this), I tend to prefer them around cellar temp. To my palate, this applies to the lions share of Riesling around $20 or less. I prefer to drink my favorite bottles at a little less than room temp so I can get every nuance it has to offer. I’m sitting here trying to declare a preference based on pradikat, but I just can’t. I think that both sweet and dry wines can suffer or benefit from a bit of chill. More than once I’ve opened something near room temp and thrown it into the refrigerator after the first few tastes.
I think it depends on how sweet you like your wines to taste. Basic molecular gastronomy says that the colder a liquid is, the less sweet it will taste and more of the acidic characteristics of it will come out. This is true whether the liquid is a smoothie, iced tea, soda or wine. As it warms up, however, the sweetness will become more pronounced.
My personal preference is to chill any wine with residual sugar equal to or above 50 g/L in the fridge. This way, as it warms up the flavor will evolve and change and not taste like a sugar bomb all at once right away. The chill also adds to the refreshing characteristic of the wine.
The other thing to mention is that a cold wine can always become warm and evolve as it does; a warm wine obviously cannot become colder unless you throw it in a conveniently nearby fridge or wine chiller and it takes longer to chill than it does to warm up.