Wine Q&A: What is the correct temperature to serve rosé wine?

: 17 May 2021

Rosé wine is best drunk cool. But how cool depends on both the temperature outside and how flavourful you like your rosé.

Rosé drunk on a hot summer's day can be refreshing. And so opened and poured straight from the fridge will ensure a serving temperature of about 5 degrees Centigrade. But this temperature will soon rise if the air surrounding the bottle is warm - which may be over 25 degrees Centigrade on a sunny garden terrace.

A gel-filled cool jacket placed on the bottle will ensure the rosé stays cold as you drink it. These can be bought cheaply and kept in the freezer for their instant cooling properties - they can also cool down a room temperature bottle in about 15 minutes. Plus they remain fully resuable even after repeated freezing and cooling - I've been using the same wine coolers for the last twenty years.

But some rosé wines are best enjoyed at a slightly warmer temperature - at about 8 degrees Centigrade. A bottle will reach this temperature after about 45 minutes once taken out of the fridge. The slightly more complex flavour of darker coloured rosés taste more enjoyable when drunk at this just cool temperature - served too cold and their bramble and raspberry fruitiness disappears into tasteless wateriness.

Fashionable lighter coloured Provence rosés, on the other hand, are best drunk super cool. Paler colours in rosés mean lighter flavours, so expect lemon with a hint of strawberry ice cream. Rosé wines that are light red or pale orange in colour often have darker flavours - so plum, redcurant and raspberry.

Some rosé wines even taste pleasantly sweet. Californian blush style rosés, or those labelled White Grenache (even though they are pink - a quirk of marketing), are semi-sweet and so best served extra cold - even with ice cubes. Allowed to warm up and drunk then, you'll find the sweetness dominates making the wine less refreshing.

So the answer to what is the correct temperature to serve rosé is there isn't one specific temperature. Cool yes, possibly very cool or even slightly warm, the choice is yours based on the colour of the wine and how warm the day is.

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