The best chilled reds to sip this summer

'Will French cars soon be running on red wine?' asked an article in Le Monde last summer, amid a discussion about French wine overproduction. Note: not rosé or white. The decline in the country's wine consumption, which has been in freefall for decades, is driven by a collapse in red wine sales, which have dropped by about 90 per cent since the 1970s.
Earlier this month, though, there was a glimmer of hope for red grape growers: a new survey showed a small rise in the popularity of red wine among French drinkers. The reason could be as simple as people finding their way to red wine styles they like. Both here and across the Channel, there's been a big shift in taste, away from tannin and towards easy-drinking reds.
Easy-drinking can mean two different things. For some drinkers, it means sugar. Why? Sugar acts like a gloss, smoothing out the wine, diminishing the perception of acidity and amplifying fruity flavours, all of which is especially pleasing to palates geared towards the taste of ultra-processed food.
If you're not sure what dry-sweet red wine tastes like, try picking up a bottle at Aldi, whose overall red wine range is one of the sweetest around: Specially Selected Aglianico del Vulture 2022, Italy (14%, £7.99), has a residual sugar rating of 9g per litre. The new Specially Selected French Caladoc Rouge 2024 (14%, £8.99) comes in at 6g. Most of the Portuguese reds are 8g and on it goes.
Red wines pretending to be dry generally make my toes curl, though I make exceptions for individual wines and circumstances – and for certain grapes, such as primitivo, which takes sweetness very well. But there's another set of drinkers, who also like easy-drinking reds and are doing things differently. This lot prize mouth-watering freshness and purity, and vibrant (rather than stewed) fruit flavours. They are buying lighter, fruitier reds and drinking them like they're whites, chilled and in the apero/cocktail slot.
The Best Chinon 2023, France (12.5%) £9.25, Morrisons
The effect is a surprising return to glory for some wines that were popular in the 1970s. At Morrisons, for instance, The Best Chinon 2023, France (12.5%, £9.25), is a Loire red made from cabernet franc and introduced almost a year ago that has been a surprise hot-seller, according to Charles Cutteridge, wine sourcing manager: 'It was a bit of a stab in the dark [to start selling it] because there's nothing in the data that suggests you should list a Loire red, but it's doing really well.'
Some of the new-style reds, however, come from regions better known for wines that are hefty with tannin. At Morrisons, they have a new Fitou, due in over the summer, made in a softly fruity style Fitou drinkers from the Seventies wouldn't recognise.
Meanwhile, earlier in spring, the Spanish wine expert Tim Atkin organised an event showcasing the cosecheros of Rioja: artisanal growers making wines full of vitality, using a form of carbonic maceration, a technique also used in Beaujolais. This is Rioja, but it doesn't taste of coconut and vanilla; imagine instead a light and red-fruited style, made to be chilled and drunk in its first flush of youth.
Château de Caraguilhes Les Gourgoules Corbières 2023, France (14.5%), £14.50, The Wine Society
Over at The Wine Society they've got Château de Caraguilhes Les Gourgoules Corbières 2023, France (14.5%, £14.50), a syrah-grenache-carignan blend that is full-bodied without being heavy, and brimful of flavours of brambles and thyme. Unoaked, a portion is made using this same carbonic maceration technique, which gives it a luminous freshness. Again, it's great served chilled, as are all three of the vital, dry reds in my Wines of the Week.
Wines of the week

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