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Get 10% off 6 still wines. Enter code SAVE10 during checkout. Excludes some fine wine and Sparkling.
Get 10% off 6 still wines. Enter code SAVE10 during checkout. Excludes some fine wine and Sparkling.
Discover our favourite light, juicy bottles built for the fridge.
Somewhere along the way we all agreed that red wine should be served at room temperature. That was sound advice in a draughty French farmhouse. It makes considerably less sense in a Highbury flat in July.
So here is our case for the chillable red. These are the bottles we reach for when it is warm: light in body, low in tannin, built on crunchy red fruit rather than oak and grip. Gamay from Beaujolais. Cinsault from the Languedoc. Mencía from Bierzo. Carbonic Merlot from Bordeaux, if you can believe it.
Twenty minutes in the fridge and they go from pleasant to properly refreshing. The chill sharpens the fruit, tightens the acidity and gives you something that does the job of a rosé with rather more to say for itself. Drink them with charcuterie, anything cooked over coals, a good tomato salad, or nothing at all in the park.
Whole bunch and carbonic ferments tend to land squarely in this territory, which is why several of the wines below use them.
£16.50
Douro Valley, Portugal · 11% · Vegan
Light by name, light by nature. This is the Douro reinvented for everyday drinking, a red that trades power for pure, easy charm. A traditional blend of Tinta Roriz, Tinto Cão, Baga and Bastardo gives a lively nose of red berries and cherry, with no oak character at all despite eight months in used French barrels, which simply round out the tannins. Light to medium bodied, silky and juicy, with the Douro backbone still there and dialled right down. Lightly chilled, with charcuterie or grilled fish, or nothing at all.
£16.00
Castilla y León, Spain · Organic · Vegan
Mencía leads here, joined by Garnacha Tintorera, Palomino Fino, Doña Blanca and Godello. Hand harvested from organically grown vines on clay, limestone, slate and schist, fermented spontaneously with indigenous yeasts and aged in old oak. Pale ruby, with a fragrant nose of red fruits, violet and fresh bread, and a smooth, refreshing style that happily blurs the line between rosé and red. Serve cool at 10 to 12°C, with good company and almost anything on the table.
£22.00
Bordeaux, France · 13% · No added sulphites · Vegan
A vibrant, juicy Bordeaux with a difference, bursting with ripe red fruits, sour cherries and crisp apple. Organic Merlot from the single Terrasses Bas plot on clay and limestone, made by carbonic maceration, a Beaujolais technique far more than a Bordeaux one, in which whole bunches ferment inside their skins under carbon dioxide. The result is fruity, light and low in tannin. Playful, unconventional and fermented naturally with nothing added.
£32.00
McLaren Vale, Australia · 13% · Vegan
Pale ruby and luminous in the glass, with a high toned, deeply pretty nose of red cherry, rose petal and delicate spice, drawn from the sandy soils where McLaren Vale Grenache finds its most lifted expression. Fresh and savoury rather than rich and jammy, with just ripe cherry fruit, a taut acid line and fine, understated tannins that add shape without weight. Grenache at its most graceful, and a world away from the sun baked interpretations the variety can produce.
Most reds in this country are served too warm. A British living room sits at around 21°C, which flatters almost nothing.
| Style | Temperature | In practice |
|---|---|---|
| Light chillable reds (Gamay, Cinsault, Mencía, Schiava, Trousseau, pale Pinot) | 11 to 13°C | 30 minutes in the fridge, or 10 in an ice bucket |
| Medium reds (Loire Cabernet Franc, Barbera, young Grenache, Frappato) | 13 to 15°C | 20 minutes in the fridge |
| Fuller reds (Rioja, Chianti Classico, Syrah, Bordeaux) | 15 to 18°C | A cool cupboard, not the radiator side of the room |
| Rich, high alcohol reds (Amarone, Châteauneuf, Napa Cabernet) | 17 to 18°C | Cellar cool, never warm |
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