Fridge door favourites

Summer's here and the fridge is working overtime, but when it comes to wine, it doesn't have to stop at white and rosé. We asked five experts to inspire us by sharing their go-to bottles for chilling.

- ANDREW JEFFORD

Hot wine is murder. Beyond 22°C, wine begins to fall apart. Touch 25°C and it's game over: the wine has become soup. Where my family and I live in Languedoc, it’s 25°C or more for five months a year - so between April and October, all wines go into the fridge. (We keep our fridge at 7°C in summer.) Between November and March, all the wines go outside the front door; we have cool winters. If Jack Frost is about, I put them on the windowsill, inside the exterior blinds.

Yes, you're right: this means that the day’s first glass of red wine will often be chilled. For lighter red wines, a mid-chill (14°C) is optimal. For dense reds, some might feel a chill is sub-optimal - but in winter, our main room is at 19°C and in summer it may be 30°C or more, so the wine quickly warms.

I love to track the changes in wines as they warm, but if 19°C is the desideratum, I pull the bottle out of the fridge an hour earlier. Red-wine aromas, it’s true, tend to be most articulate at somewhere between 16°C and 20°C.

Storing opened wines in the cold gives them a further lease of life. I’m too lazy to use wine-preservation systems, but most wines last at least three days without deterioration, served from the fridge and put straight back into it. What we drink at home, meanwhile, changes surprisingly little with the seasons: yes, summer is hot, but I still love great red wine for food, with all its textured intrigue, and to serve red wine cool adds to its refreshment value. The fridge is my friend.

Andrew Jefford

Decanter Contributing Editor & DWWA Co-Chair (southern France)