Lightly chilled, 55–60°F. If the bottle has been sitting at room temperature, twenty minutes in the fridge gets it there. Most people serve red wine too warm, because "room temperature" was decided when rooms were ten degrees colder than yours. Warm Pinot Noir tastes flat and alcoholic; the same bottle at 57°F tastes fresh and lively. Temperature changes the wine more than the glass or the decanter does.
The number, and how to hit it without a thermometer
The target is 55–60°F. Two reliable ways to get there:
From room temperature: 20 minutes in the fridge. Set a timer — a bottle left in there through dinner prep comes out too cold, which mutes the aromatics.
From the fridge: 30 minutes on the counter. Fridge temperature is around 38°F, which is too cold for any red.
The touch test: the bottle should feel cool against the back of your hand, not cold. If it feels like nothing, it is too warm.
If you have overshot and the wine is too cold, a hand around the bowl of the glass fixes it in a couple of minutes. Overshooting cold is easy to undo; overshooting warm is not, because you cannot cool a poured glass gracefully.
Why "room temperature" is bad advice now
The phrase comes from European houses that were not centrally heated. The room in question was around 60°F. Your room is probably 70–72°F.
So the traditional advice, followed literally, now serves red wine about twelve degrees too warm — which is enough to change it substantially.
What warmth does to a light red
Three things, all bad.
Alcohol becomes obvious. Warmth makes ethanol more volatile, so it dominates the nose and adds a hot, slightly burning edge to the finish. The wine tastes stronger than it is.
Acidity disappears. The freshness that makes Pinot Noir work with food is the first casualty. A warm light red tastes flabby — sweet-ish, soft, vague.
Detail collapses. The red fruit and savoury notes that reward attention blur into general fruitiness.
Cool it slightly and all three reverse. It is the cheapest improvement available to anyone drinking wine at home, and it costs twenty minutes.
Glassware: what matters, what does not
What matters: a bowl wide enough to swirl without spilling, and a rim that narrows to gather the aromatics. Fill it about a third full — the empty space is where the wine works.
What does not matter nearly as much as it is sold: varietal-specific stemware. There is a real difference between a proper wine glass and a tumbler. The difference between a good universal glass and a grape-specific one is small enough that it should not be the reason anybody buys anything.
One decent set of universal glasses is better than four specialised sets you are afraid to wash.
Decanting: usually no
Decanting does two jobs: separating a wine from its sediment, and giving a tight young wine air.
Pinot Noir rarely needs either. It is light enough that aggressive aeration blows off the aromatics you were trying to find, and it is not usually tannic enough to need softening.
If a bottle has some age and visible sediment, decant gently and drink it soon. Otherwise, open it, pour it, and let the glass do the work. Swirling in the glass gives a light red all the air it wants.
Pouring order, if there are several bottles
Lighter before heavier, drier before sweeter, younger before older. The reason is simple: a big wine recalibrates your palate, and everything that follows it tastes thinner than it is.
If Pinot Noir is on the table with something bigger, pour the Pinot first.
What is left in the bottle
Recork it and put it in the fridge, including the red. Cold slows oxidation, and you can bring the glass back up to temperature in your hand in a couple of minutes.
A light red keeps three to five days that way. The full timings by style are here.
The one-line version
Twenty minutes in the fridge, a glass you can swirl, no decanter. That is the entire technique, and it will do more for the wine than anything else you could buy.
Our own bottle is a Willamette Valley Pinot Noir — cool-climate, built around freshness, which is exactly the kind of wine that suffers most when it is served warm. The boxes are here.