What is worse - a warm wine or a watered-down wine?
Research from Australian winemakers has suggested that ice cubes are the secret to making your wine taste better, especially on those hot summer days when your bottle hasn't chilled.
However, co-founder and Chief Tasting Officer of WineFriend, Yvonne Lorkin, says there's something we need to understand about this research.
Talking to Jay-Jay & Flynny, Yvonne breaks down that it's all in the wording of "tastes better."
She explains, "What's your definition of better? No one likes a warm rosé or a warm glass of fizz, especially if it's a hot day and you want to cool down. Warm wines are flaccid, insipid, flabby, horrible-tasting wines. So cooling the wine, of course, is going to make it taste better because it's going to make all the flavour molecules, acidity, and that kind of thing, kind of pull themselves back in and become perky again."
However, there's obviously a side effect to using ice - dilution. In Yvonne's opinion, this can be a good thing.
She notes, "If the wine is cheap and nasty or old, and you chuck a few ice cubes in it, it might taste better because you're diluting those ugly flavours."
However, as the ice waters down your wine and lowers the alcohol percentage, it also sacrifices the flavour.
But there are alternative options, which will also fix the common mistake many Kiwis make when it comes to drinking reds and whites, so you can drink a glass in its best condition! Listen to her suggestions in the highlight clip above.
