Think about the last few times you ordered a glass or bottle of white wine in a restaurant. Did it show up ice cold? Odds are it did, because standard restaurant practice is to keep white wines in a fridge. As often as not, a server will bring a well-chilled bottle to the table and ask if you want an ice bucket. Just in case the wine accidentally reaches a drinkable temperature. This is thought to be a hallmark of fine wine service.
Consider what happens to a wine when it is chilled down to refrigerator or ice bucket temperature. The aromatics – a strong point for many white wines – all but vanish. The fruit flavors close up – shrinkage! The acids pop out aggressively, because everything else has been squashed. And should that wine have a flaw, such as brett or TCA, it will either be undetectable or hidden to such a degree as to seem unimportant.
From a restaurant point of view, this is all good, because it heads off many possible problems. But from where I sit, it takes away much of the pleasure that I’m paying a premium for. I’ll grant you that serving white wines at a proper drinking temperature is a challenge. Room temperature is too warm, but the easy alternatives – fridge or ice bucket – are too cold. And quite honestly, most people are so accustomed to drinking their whites really cold that they may not notice or care about what they are missing.