This Genius '30-Minute Rule' Will Make Your Favorite Wine Even More Delicious

Love wine but feel like there’s a lot you don’t know about it?

You’re not alone.

Humans have been making the delicious stuff for over 8,000 years, which means we’ve had a lot of time to figure out the best ways to enjoy drinking it, but those techniques don’t always reach everyone.

That’s why we — Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, hosts of HuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast — asked Doug Frost, master sommelier and co-founder of Echoland Winery, to join us for an entire episode dedicated to demystifying wine.

Listen to the full podcast by pressing play on the player and learn tons of wine secrets:

Frost explained why letting wine breathe can make it taste better, the truth about boxed wine (and why it gets an unfairly bad rap) and offered a brilliant (and incredibly easy) hack for optimizing our imbibing: the 30-minute rule.

“[People] talk a lot about red wines being [served] at room temperature and white wines coming out of the refrigerator, and both those places are not ideal,” he told us.

That’s because in wines that are served too warm, the “alcohol will be emphasized, leaving it flat and flabby,” according to Wine Spectator, and in wines that are served too cold “aromas and flavors will be muted and, for reds, the tannins may seem harsh and astringent.”

“Some wines like to be a little colder than other wines [but] when you get a wine straight out of the fridge… it’s usually gonna be so cold, you can’t taste and smell everything that it has to offer,” Frost said.

“Sometimes you’ll see wine geeks literally warming the glass up in their hands,” he noted, in order to bring cold wine up to a temperature where they can enjoy its complexities.

But there’s a simpler way to get closer to the 55 degree “sweet spot”