Why it's totally cool to chill your red wine this summer

[Celerity]

Keep in the fridge door and pour at 10-15C. Here are seven bottles to stick in your ice bucket

https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/food-drink/article/best-reds-to-serve-chilled-this-summer-vn0swz2n6

https://archive.ph/0oZ3w



It wasn’t long ago that chilling red wine was the sort of niche sommelier activity everyone laughed at. How times change. This spring you can hardly glance at a wine list without encountering the rather odd-sounding phrase “chillable red”. Of course we’ve always drunk red wine during the summer months, and sparkling red can really only be served chilled. But there does seem to be a trend towards popping lighter reds in the fridge or briefly submerging them in an ice bucket. This enhances their vibrant, fruity notes and makes them all the more refreshing.

The supermarkets are all over it. Aldi recently launched its first “chill-to-reveal” red, complete with a clever “thermochromic” label that turns blue when the wine is deemed cold enough to drink. Sainsbury’s has also introduced its first “chillable red” (that phrase again), while at the Marks & Spencer spring tasting, an entire table was dedicated to the category. Traditionally the wines we chilled were lighter, fruitier and had more marked acidity, such as beaujolais (gamay), Loire Valley reds (cabernet franc), cinsault and grenache in southern France, and more fruit-forward pinot noirs from the southern hemisphere.



These days, there are many more options. Adventurous wine merchants and supermarket buyers have introduced a great swathe of grape varieties to the chilled-reds lexicon. These include frappato and nerello mascalese from Sicily, mencia from Spain and zweigelt from Austria. All these wines benefit from being poured at a temperature of 10-15C, in other words after an hour or two in the fridge door or half that lying down at the back. Don’t serve it ice cold as you might a sparkling wine or sauvignon blanc, because that will mute the aroma and accentuate the bitter tannins. As a rule of thumb, the bottle should feel cool to the touch. With a scruffy salad and a torn piece of bread, a chilled glass of uncomplicated red is one of summer’s simple pleasures. Here are six to drop into your ice bucket.

snip

[Aristus]

1. I frequently drink my reds chilled. Have done so for decades.

Nice to know I was ahead of the trend.

Loungers: gaze upon my boozy acumen!