ONCE UPON A TIME, in pre-pandemic days, drinking wine outside with friends was a choice and not a necessity. But like most oenophiles, I learned to adjust as the weeks of privation stretched into months. I drank wine on patios in the summer and next to heaters and firepits in the fall. In the winter I didn’t drink wine outside at all. But now that spring has finally arrived, I’m looking forward to spending more time imbibing outdoors.
Of course, many wine professionals have been serving wine outside all year long—whether at tables beachside in Miami, on the sidewalks of New York or overlooking a vineyard in Napa. These pros know how to keep wine at the right temperature whether it’s 8 or 80 degrees outside, which glasses to use and even how to keep flies from falling into them. When I reached out for advice, sommeliers and winemakers generously shared it along with a few favorite recollections of drinking wine outside themselves.
Vintner Beth Novak Milliken, president and CEO of Spottswoode Estate Vineyard & Winery in St. Helena, Calif., drinks wine outdoors nearly year round—a great benefit of living in northern California, she said. When she’s drinking outside, at home or at the winery, she uses regular glasses, but anywhere else she opts for Govino glasses, a plastic kind that doesn’t make wine taste like plastic as well.
There was even a time when she skipped the glass altogether. A few years ago, Ms. Milliken went skiing with friends at Steamboat Springs, Colo., where she learned of a certain local tradition. She and her group took their bottle to the top of the slope and, following the local custom, buried it in the snow. At the end of the day they returned to the spot, and since they hadn’t brought glassware, they drank from the bottle and skied down the slope afterward—a great experience, Ms. Milliken recalled.
Boulder-based restaurateur Bobby Stuckey does his fair share of skiing on Colorado’s slopes, and running and biking, too. But when it comes to drinking wine outdoors, he’s more likely to break out a bottle when he’s hiking with his wife, Danette. “A mountain hike with a bottle of Riesling is great, and you’re not going to be impaired,” he said, noting the low alcohol of most Rieslings. Aldo Sohm, wine director of Le Bernardin in New York City and an avid cyclist who bikes 200 miles or more in a week when he’s not working, is also a fan of light whites, especially after a grueling ride. “I like something that refreshes, like a Muscadet or Grüner Veltliner, the lighter, the better,” he said.
