On Wednesday evening in Didsbury, south Manchester, red wine lovers gathered for a sell-out tasting that broke one of wine’s longest-standing rules. Every bottle served during the two-hour session at Cru Manchester came straight from the fridge.
The £44-a-ticket event was the creation of Henry Alassane, owner of Cru Manchester, who has been drinking chilled red wine for years. But only recently has he noticed more customers asking for the same — and this year he has seen a “massive increase”.
“Red wine lovers in the UK are increasingly chilling their reds, driven by a heatwave and younger drinkers breaking old rules.”
“It’s something that we see guests actively asking for,” agrees Holly Willcocks, owner of Half Cut wine bar in Kentish Town, London. “I think it’s definitely, slowly become something that people are really keen on.” She says it is specifically younger drinkers driving the shift — the same customers who were asking for orange wine last year.
The trend is not confined to bars. Searches for chilled red wine on Ocado have soared compared with last year, and in April Aldi released a red wine with a label that changes colour once it is properly chilled. “This summer has seen a surge in the popularity of chilling red wine,” says Miles Beale, CEO of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association. “This is partly down to the heatwave and partly down to breaking down old school wine myths.”
Younger shoppers are leading the charge. An Ocado survey in June found that 56% of Gen Z and young millennial respondents said they have had a red wine chilled or served with ice during summer months.
Dominic Lee, 26, first encountered a chilled red in trendy London wine bars. He enjoyed it so much that he started putting bottles of it in the fridge at home. It “takes the edge off” the drink and makes it less heavy, says Dominic, who usually prefers white wine.
For Emma Moore, chilling red wine makes it taste more refreshing and accentuates its fruitiness. “I love a chilled red and have done for quite a while,” she says, calling it “rosé for grown-ups”. Moore runs wine tastings in York and makes sure she always includes a chilled red option, much to the surprise of many of her clients.
As temperatures in Britain soar, the option of a chilled red wine becomes all the more appealing. The old belief that red wine must be served at room temperature is being quietly abandoned — one fridge-cold glass at a time.
