If you are traveling and want to share a drink with your traveling companions, you need a wine that can travel with you. Red wine is that wine. You can serve it at room temperature, it doesn’t need to be chilled, and it pairs well with the kinds of grilled foods you’re likely to prepare and eat outdoors.
Whether you are going on a picnic, staying in a hotel, or camping out on a beautiful mountain outlook, a bottle of good red wine is a portable, simple, and elegant drink for your travels.
4 Reasons Red Wine Is A Great Choice When Traveling
Picnics and Tailgating
The main reason red wine is excellent for travel is that it doesn’t need to be refrigerated. While white wine is best served chilled and needs to be refrigerated after opening, you can serve red wine at room temperature. This means you can bring it to a picnic or a tailgate party and don’t need to bring along a cooler, too.
One bottle of red wine serves a small group. It’s more compact even than a 6-pack of beer, and unlike beer, it doesn’t need to be iced down. In addition, everyone generally likes red wine and adds an air of sophistication to your gathering.
Save Money by Having Happy Hour in Your Hotel Room
Since red wine doesn’t need to be refrigerated, you can have a bottle in your hotel room and know that it will be just as good tomorrow night as it will be tonight. Even if your hotel room doesn’t have a mini-fridge, you can still enjoy your drink and don’t have to worry about it going off.
Also, hotel bars can be expensive, and bringing your own drinks saves you money. You don’t have to pay bar prices, and you still get a high-quality product. Plus, you can drink it anytime, not just when the hotel bar is open.
Camping and Hiking
When you’re going camping, it’s essential to pack light. This is especially true if you plan on hiking to your camping spot. Why bring a cooler full of ice and drinks when you could bring a single bottle? Since red wine doesn’t need to be refrigerated, it’s easy to bring along on your camping trip.
Red wine also matches up well with the types of foods you tend to eat when camping: grilled meats and flame-broiled seafood pair wonderfully with red wine.
A Few Things to Remember
A bottle of red wine may not need to be chilled, but it’s important not to get it too hot, either. When you take a bottle of red wine on your trip, keep it at a good temperature and out of the sun. Being at a temperature of 70 degrees or higher for a long time can permanently alter the flavor of the wine. If it gets hotter than 80 degrees, it will start to develop a sour, vinegar taste.
Another thing to keep in mind when transporting wine is the vibrations that may occur, whether from driving in a car, walking, or riding on a train. Lots of wine gurus believe that vibrations in wine can cause chemical reactions and stir up sediment that will change the flavor of the wine.
However, concerns about vibrations are more relevant if you plan on aging the wine for a while. Normally vibrations are something to worry about, but if you are taking the wine on a trip and plan to drink it soon, you shouldn’t have to worry too much. A short time in the car won’t drastically alter the taste of your wine.
In Conclusion
If you want to bring an alcoholic beverage on the road or on the trail with you, your options can be pretty limited. Lots of drinks like beer and white wine are best served cold, but you don’t want to deal with coolers full of ice when you’re trying to travel light.
Red wine is the perfect alcoholic travel companion. All you need is the bottle at room temperature. As long as you don’t leave it in the sun or shake it too vigorously, your red wine should be ready to drink as-is the moment you reach your picnic, hotel room, or campground.
