Wine Serving Temperature Chart: Free Printable
A free printable wine serving temperature chart in Celsius and Fahrenheit, with chilling times for eleven wine styles and the fridge and freezer math.
Serving temperature is the cheapest possible upgrade to any bottle you already own, and the one most people get wrong in both directions: whites straight from a fridge that is too cold, reds from a room that is too warm.
The chart below is the whole of it. Print it, put it near the fridge, and stop guessing.
The chart
| Wine style | Serve at (C) | Serve at (F) | From room temperature | From the fridge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Champagne and sparkling | 6 to 8 | 43 to 46 | 2 hours in the fridge | ready |
| Sweet and dessert wine | 6 to 8 | 43 to 46 | 2 hours in the fridge | ready |
| Crisp white (Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio) | 7 to 10 | 45 to 50 | 90 minutes in the fridge | ready |
| Rosé | 7 to 10 | 45 to 50 | 90 minutes in the fridge | ready |
| Dry Sherry (Fino, Manzanilla) | 7 to 9 | 45 to 48 | 2 hours in the fridge | ready |
| Full or oaked white (white Burgundy) | 10 to 13 | 50 to 55 | 1 hour in the fridge | 20 minutes out |
| Tawny Port and Madeira | 10 to 12 | 50 to 54 | 1 hour in the fridge | 15 minutes out |
| Light red (Beaujolais, light Pinot Noir) | 12 to 14 | 54 to 57 | 45 minutes in the fridge | 30 minutes out |
| Medium red (Chianti, Rioja) | 14 to 16 | 57 to 61 | 30 minutes in the fridge | 45 minutes out |
| Full red (Cabernet, Syrah) | 16 to 18 | 61 to 64 | 20 minutes in the fridge | 1 hour out |
| Vintage Port and rich fortified | 14 to 16 | 57 to 61 | 30 minutes in the fridge | 45 minutes out |
The math, if you want to do it yourself
Cooling is roughly linear over the ranges that matter, so you can estimate rather than guess:
| Method | Degrees C per minute | Time to drop 10C |
|---|---|---|
| Fridge (4C) | about 0.1 | 100 minutes |
| Freezer | about 0.33 | 30 minutes |
| Ice water with salt | about 0.67 | 15 minutes |
An ice-water bath beats the freezer by a factor of two and cannot be forgotten about overnight. Add a generous handful of salt: it lowers the freezing point of the water, which lets the bath sit below zero without turning solid.
Two things worth knowing
Wine warms in the glass faster than you think. A red poured at 16C will be near 19C within twenty minutes of being held. Serve slightly cooler than the target and let the glass do the rest.
Cold hides faults, and everything else with them. If a wine only tastes good very cold, that is a verdict on the wine.
The serving temperature calculator will do the chilling math for a specific bottle and starting point, and the service quiz drills this alongside decanting, glassware, and faults.
Get the next one before everyone else
Join the Sommo letter for one email a month of exam-prep material: new printables, mock exams, and the study tactics that actually move a score. No spam, unsubscribe in one click.
Common questions
Not the temperature of your room. The phrase dates from unheated European houses and meant something closer to 16C or 61F. A modern living room at 21C or 70F makes a full-bodied red taste hot and flabby, its alcohol prominent and its fruit blurred. Twenty minutes in the fridge fixes almost every red in the house.
Cold suppresses aroma. Below about 6C or 43F a wine's volatile compounds barely leave the glass, so a complex white tastes of very little but its own acidity. This is why cheap wine benefits from a hard chill and good wine does not: chilling hides flaws, and it hides everything else with them.
From room temperature, roughly one degree Celsius every ten minutes in a fridge, every three minutes in a freezer, and every ninety seconds in an ice-water bath with a handful of salt in it. The salted ice bath is far faster than the freezer and carries no risk of a forgotten bottle exploding.
More than almost any other variable you control. Warmth pushes alcohol and sweetness forward and softens the perception of acidity and tannin. Cold does the reverse: it sharpens acidity, hardens tannin, and mutes fruit. The same bottle at 12C and at 20C is a genuinely different experience.
6 to 8C, or 43 to 46F. Cold keeps the bubbles fine and the pressure manageable, which matters for safety as well as for taste: a warm bottle of sparkling wine is a hazard when you open it. Vintage Champagne is the exception worth making, since a degree or two warmer lets its autolytic character through.