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THE 30 SECOND WINE ADVISOR
Wine in the microwave!?
Wine is pure, wine is natural. Wine has been made by hand for at least 8,000 years, and the very idea of subjecting it to high-tech abuse seems wrong in so many ways.
Accordingly, the very idea of popping a ration of fine wine into the microwave oven might be enough to make a wine snob faint dead away. Under some very specific circumstances, though, cautious use of the nuke oven may make sense.
Here's one: In Friday's 30 Second Wine Advisor, I talked about keeping leftover wine in an open bottle. Unfortunately, wine deteriorates quickly once it's opened. While a day or two of "breathing" may actually improve youthful, immature wines, all wines soon deteriorate with exposure to air, losing their fruit and then oxidizing, eventually taking on the nutlike scent of cheap Sherry.
Keeping a recorked, partly finished bottle in the refrigerator seems to slow down this process. In my experience, table wines start to show changes after only a few days at room temperature, but can hold on for a week or two in the fridge. Fortified wines like Port, because of their alcoholic strength, last longer, although even there, I wouldn't count on more than a week at room temperature, three or four weeks under refrigeration.
But refrigerating red wine or Port creates a service problem. These wines are best served at cool room temperature, not cold. A quick taste of Port or Cabernet straight from the fridge will provide a useful lesson that you won't soon forget. Most people find cold red wine tastes thin, sour and out of whack.
Enter the microwave! A short session in the nuke oven will quickly bring your wine back to serving temperature, and it will not harm the wine provided you warm it in short bursts of 10 to 15 seconds on the first zap, perhaps even less on a second and third zap if the wine seems to need it.
Even if the bottle will fit in your microwave, you're probably better off to decant it into a Pyrex measuring cup for ease in handling. And do take care not to overdo. Boiling your wine - or even getting it really hot - is certainly worse than serving it cold.
But please be assured that, even with a very fine wine, a careful, step-by-step microwave warming will do no harm. And just in case you were wondering, chilling wine and then taking it back to room temperature (and even repeating this process) doesn't hurt it, either. Your fine wines deserve respectful treatment, but generally speaking, modern commercial wine is rarely fragile. Relax, don't worry, enjoy your wine.
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