Plenty, believes the Clare Valley-based Taylors family wine company, which trialled the technology on a limited basis last year.

It has now put its Optimum Drinking Temperature Sensors on the back labels of its popular $20 Taylors Estate and $15 Promised Land ranges of wines. The sensors change colour depending on the temperature of bottles of wine - turning green when a white or sparkling wine is just right to pour and turning fuchsia for red wines.

The initiative was triggered by a Taylors-commissioned Wine Intelligence survey, which suggested many Australians were drinking red wines too warm and white and sparkling wines too cold. The widespread Australian practice of serving reds at room temperature originated from medieval French drawing rooms which were closer to 14 to 16-degrees centigrade. By contrast the 22 to 24 degrees temperature of an average Aussie home, particularly in summer, had a negative impact on the flavour of our shiraz, pinot noir or cabernet sauvignon tipples.

Wine Intelligence also found that Australians tended to over-chill their white wines, masking their flavours and aromas and making acid elements more pronounced.  

Data from Nielsen ScanTrack, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and IRI-Aztec Liquor Outlook suggested that each day in Australia about 406,825 bottles of red wine and 436,615 bottles of white wine were being consumed at the incorrect temperature.

Taylors managing director, Mitchell Taylor, says expensive high-tech wine fridges and thermometers can be used to control and monitor a wine’s temperature. Most Australians, however, don’t have this equipment and so Taylors believed its Optimum Drinking Temperature Sensor provided a solution.

Taylors chief winemaker, Adam Eggins, supports refrigerating both red and white wines and has prepared the table, pictured,  with the ideal serving temperatures for various wines. He suggests putting a red wine in the fridge 30 minutes before serving. For whites and sparklers, he favours taking bottles from the fridge 30 minutes before opening, giving them time to warm up and to fully display their aromas and flavours.

Adam joined Taylors in 2000 and in 2006 was judged Winestate magazine winemaker of the year. The Taylors Estate range and Promised Land range wines are widely available in bottle shops and on taylorswines.com.au.