Keep a cool head with wines for hot days

If there’s one thing that unites the wines that enliven summer entertaining of any sort, it’s their temperature. “Best-served cool” applies, no matter what the colour or style of the wine, or the type of event. Even if you’re thinking of pairing up a weighty malbec or shiraz with some slow-cooked lamb or a slab of barbecued beef, you’re best off keeping the wine in the fridge beforehand. Studies have shown that no wine, even the densest, most powerful reds, are ever at their best over 20C, when they start to feel soupy, flabby and tired (and OK, by studies, I do mean “my own random research”, but I stand by the point).

In fact, many red wines could do with being served a lot cooler than that upper limit. Lighter, crunchier, fruitier reds without the vanilla and toasty flavours of oak or a mass of chewy tannin, are best treated the same way as your rosé, orange or white wines, and they can be every bit as refreshing. And if a guest finds the wine too warm, it’ll soon warm up in the glass on a hot summer’s day; much quicker, certainly, than it would take to make a too-warm wine cool. Wines that fit this particular bill, and which are as happy going with meatier fish (salmon and tuna) as they are with red meat and smoky aubergine-led vegetable dishes (versatile is the work I’m looking for), include the leafy-green cool, pencil-shaving graphite and curranty crunch of cabernet franc from the Loire Valley, of which Morrisons The Best Chinon (£9.25), is a nicely styled and priced example. But the closest thing to the absolute paradigm of a cool summer red I’ve tasted this year comes from further upstream along the Loire in the Côte Roannaise towards Beaujolais. Using the same grape variety as Beaujolais (gamay) the soft summer berry fruit-filled Domaine Sérol Éclat de Granite 2024 (from £15.50, thewinesociety.com; dorsetwine.co.uk) also ticks off another summer entertaining ideal by being relatively low in alcohol (11.5% abv).

Lighter reds don’t really cut it as a base for what has, in this latest brain-frazzlingly, record-breakingly hot summer, become my aperitif of choice: To come through the dilution, an old-school spritzer requires something altogether richer and even a bit sweeter than I’d normally be looking for. In a classic one-part wine to three-parts soda water spritzer, I’d go for a voluminously fruity ripe red (such as Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Portuguese Lisboa Red 2024; £8) a brightly strawberry fruited off-dry rosé (such as M&S Rosé d’Anjou 2025; £7.50) or a punchily gooseberry-pungent white (such as Maison du Vin Côtes de Gascogne 2025; £7.25). When it comes to quality, I think of spritzer wine as a notch above cooking wine, and a similar rule of thumb applies: there’s no point using something very smart (the subtleties you’re paying for will get lost with the water/cooking) but never use something you wouldn’t drink “neat”.

I’d be saving the good stuff for some of the classic summer food-and-wine pairings that are failsafe choices for entertaining. A shellfish platter with briney, bone dry Waitrose Blueprint Muscadet 2025 (£7.25). A tangy goat’s cheese tart or salad with the cool, green, grassy False Bay Windswept Sauvignon Blanc 2025 (£10.90, noblegreenwines.co.uk). The salt, umami and freshness of salade niçoise with cool, gently citrus-infused strawberries and watermelon of Château Minuty M de Minuty Rosé Côtes de Provence (£19, majestic.co.uk). Some fat, barbecued prawns or langoustines with the steely flash of steel and lime in Pewsey Vale Eden Valley Riesling, Australia 2024 (£17.50, amathusdrinks.com). Charcuterie and cheese with the feathery fine tannins and amiably juicy cherry of Château Famaey L’Impression Cahors 2023 (£15.75, yapp.co.uk), a plumply succulent red that delights, like all the best summer wines, in being served cool.