With Japan's summer still parching throats as it turns its muggy-hot head toward autumn, let's turn our thoughts, and our thirsts, to wines for refreshment as the heat lingers on.
In my antiwine-snob, wine-populist way, I'm tempted to say that on very hot days any well-made young dry wine, red or white, will do rather well if it's suitably chilled. In fact, although that tends to hold true in general, it isn't all quite that simple. Some dry and semi-dry white wines wouldn't deliver their full flavor if over-chilled, and what's over-chilled for one wine may not be for another.
Fruitiness, sometimes confused with sweetness, needs the right temperature to convey its full flavor. For certain white wines that could be 12 or even 13 C. If lower, the wine's coldness alone may dominate; not sensible at all. If above all you want to slake your hot-weather thirst with a well-chilled wine, the logical choice is one chilled to 9 or 10 C. That applies to fairly dry, acidic whites, to roses, and to young reds suitable for chilling, such as Beaujolais Nouveau, trollinger and any number of others.