I'll whisper "honey" and my wife will swing her elbow saying 'gout'
A universal affliction, crossing all cultures and ages.
As a rule of thumb, beer (and I suspect wine, too) is best served at the temperature it was fermented at. British ales are fermented in the high 50sF, and German lagers, in the low to mid 40s.
Good point. A corollary possibility is that cave temperatures (and cellar temperatures, if deep enough) are uniform (about 54°F/12°C, I seem to recall) and they're dark. And guess where beer and wines were fermented, after the initial activation of the yeast? This guess and your theory are not mutually-exclusive, and might both be valid.
I'm fortunate in having a windowless storage room (with shelves) below ground level that, with its heat turned off, maintains temperatures ranging from 59°F/15°C in winter to 63°F/17.2°C in summer. So, for red wines at least, it's in the range for red wine, according to the "optimum drinking temperature" charts I've seen (54°-64°, depending on the grape variety). For temperature-obsessed red wine drinkers, 5-10 seconds in the m-wave or 5 min. or so in the fridge brings a glass of red up/down to specification. The specification for still white wines ranges from 43° to 50°, so putting a glass (full or empty) in the fridge for a few minutes will correct the drinking temperature. (Sparkling wines are listed with lower temperatures, presumably because of the carbonation.)
For me, it's not a problem. My three-prong taste test is whether wine or beer (1) tastes yucky, (2) burns my tongue, or (3) freezes same. If it does none of the three, it passes!
