Should you forget that wine is supposed to be fun, something serious wine lovers are occasionally in danger of doing, chillable red wines are here to remind you not to take all your bottles too seriously.

While there are certainly some historical categories of red wine that have always done better with a little pre-pouring refrigeration – Etna Rosso, cru beaujolais, País, and Freisa, I’m looking at you – I’m referring to a whole new category of wine that has emerged from the froth of the natural-wine world.

All but unheard of ten years ago, the chillable-red category now sometimes has its own standalone refrigerated section in the trendiest wine retailers and its own real estate on some restaurant wine lists.

‘For the last couple of years we’ve got people walking in several times a week asking if we carry chilled reds, and that’s in addition to all our regulars who know we have them and are constantly dropping in to grab a bottle out of the cooler’, says Peter Palmer, a long-time wine director and sommelier who, post-pandemic, is now ‘loving the retail wine bar life’ at William Cross Wine Merchant in San Francisco. ‘It’s really picked up this year.’

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