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San Francisco Chronicle
DRINKING WITH Esther
Sept. 2, 2021

Forget 'chillable reds.' All red wines should be served a little cold

Let's talk about the chillable red.

This has become a bona fide new category of wines during the last few years. A roster of options that used to consist merely of sparkling, white, rosé and red now also includes chillable red on many wine lists. It's loosely defined, but we can generally understand it to refer to a set of ultra-light red wines, pale in color, maybe even approaching dark-rosé territory, that taste good when served at cold temperatures.

I'm all for these wines. I love a cold, delicate Pinot Noir or Gamay, especially on a hot summer day, and I'm as guilty as anyone of using the term (including in a recent tasting-note roundup). But my fear is that the rise of the chillable red category will distract from a pressing, urgent issue: All red wines should be chilled.

To be clear, red wines should not be served as cold as white wines. If you have temperature-control settings in your wine fridge, take note: The ideal temperature for a white wine, to my palate, is about 45 degrees. For a red wine, I'd put the ideal around 60 degrees. That may not be as cold as some of the so-called chillable reds are getting served at, but 60 degrees is still cool to the touch, and it's definitely cooler than room temperature. If you live in San Francisco, you can probably use the outdoor temperature most days as a good reference point.

I bring this up now because as I've resumed visiting restaurants and bars over the last few months, I've been reminded of how unfortunately common it is to be served a glass of warm red wine. This pretty much ruins it for me. Even a wine that's lively and fresh can start to taste dull and heavy when too warm. Not to mention the fact that a wine can be damaged − "maderized" is the technical term − when stored at hot temperatures over a longer period of time, making a wine taste oxidized and old.

Since the prime candidates for "chillable red" designation tend to be lighter-bodied, you might assume that fuller-bodied reds aren't suited to chilling. I'm here to tell you that is false. Big, bold reds − Cabernet Sauvignons, Syrahs, Zinfandels − need to chill too, maybe even more than leaner reds do. At that 60-degree-ish point, I tend to find that the more refreshing aspects of those wines become more prominent: A Syrah may show more of its signature violet aroma, and a Cab may express some of the grape variety's characteristic sweet green herb profile.

Harvey Steiman, the retired Wine Spectator critic, once confessed in a column that he had added ice cubes to a glass of Pinot Noir to cool it down. Many purists expressed shock that he would dilute the precious wine. But I'm on his side here: If the choice is between a warm glass of Pinot or a cold, slightly diluted glass, I'm going with the latter option.

Maybe that's part of the reason why chillable reds have taken off − the idea of a cool-to-the-touch glass of red just has such a deep, instinctive appeal to us. I just hope that the trend doesn't lead a whole new generation of wine lovers to believe that some red wines don't deserve a good 30 minutes in the fridge before serving. They're all chillable.

Courtesy of San Francisco Chronicle

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