How to Drink White Wine

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Drinking white wine is a rich, flavorful experience. The different types of white wines have widely divergent flavor profiles that are delicious on their own or paired with different foods. This all may sound a little intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of the different white wine types, how best to serve and taste them, and what foods go best with each type, drinking white wine will become a much more rewarding experience for you!

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1 Chill your white wine to 50 to 60 °F (10 to 16 °C) before serving it. The best way to get your wine to this temperature is to store it in the refrigerator after you buy it and leave it there for several hours. Conversely, if you need to serve it right away, leave your bottle in the freezer for about 30 minutes to do the trick!^[1]
- While this is the optimal temperature range for white wine, don’t worry too much about chilling your wine down to a specific temperature. Just getting your white wine down to “refrigerator temperature” should be enough to put it in this optimal range.
- If you do want to make sure your wine is 50 to 60 °F (10 to 16 °C) before serving it, use a bottle thermometer to gauge the wine’s temperature before you open it. You can buy one of these devices relatively cheaply online or in a winery.
2 Drink your wine out of a white wine glass with a small bowl. This kind of glass is best for preserving the aroma of white wine, maintaining the wine’s optimal cool temperature, and expressing the acidity of wines like sauvignon blanc. However, if you can’t use a white wine glass, a standard wine glass will usually also work.^[2]
- If you’re drinking a creamier white wine, like American chardonnay, a glass with a large bowl may actually do a better job of expressing that creamy texture.
3 Hold your glass by the stem to avoid heating the wine with your hands. You may not realize it, but holding the wine glass by the bowl inadvertently allows you to transfer the body heat in your hands into the wine. If drinking white wine at the optimal cool temperature is important to you, make sure you always grip your glass by its stem.^[3]
- Conversely, if your wine is too cold (which is possible), holding the glass by the bowl is a good way to let the wine heat up a bit before drinking it.
4 Take some time to appreciate the appearance and aroma of the wine. Hold the glass up to the light to appreciate the wine’s color, or swirl the glass to see how much of the wine sticks to the glass. Before you drink it, lift the glass up to your nose and breathe in the scent of the wine. The experience of drinking white wine is as much about the look and smell of the wine as it is about the taste of it.^[4]
- The primary aromas associated with wine are fruit flavors, herbal flavors, and floral flavors. When you smell your wine, see if it has a fruity smell like raspberries, an herbal aroma like mint, or a flowery smell like roses.
- Don’t feel discouraged if you don’t notice much about the wine’s smell at first. The more experience you have with different wines, the more you’ll learn to distinguish individual flavors and aromas.
- How much of the wine sticks to the glass when you swirl it indicates how rich and dense the wine is. The more wine that sticks to the glass, the bolder the alcohol…