Summer calls for chilled red wine

Wine snobs may turn up their noses at the very idea, but some red wines really do benefit from a good chilling

Last week’s column was a casual toe-dip into the lido of summer-centric drinks writing. I write these columns just over two weeks in advance, so I need Met Office/clairvoyant weather prediction skills to work out what it is we’re likely to be drinking by the time the column comes out. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and declare that summer will be here when you read this. No, don’t look out of the window. Keep looking at your phone screen, and imagine the sun’s beating down outside. That calls for a chilled red, right?

The types of red wine that fare best when chilled are those that are fruity, youthful and not too tannic. The punching down or pumping over of a wine can extract tannins from the skins, pips and stalks. Often confused with the mouth-puckering effect of acidity, the best way I can describe the sensation of tannins is it’s a bit like when you drink the last dregs of a cup of green tea: it tastes all stemmy and dry, and you can feel where you’ve been biting the inside of your cheeks.