Reds can be the new roses

When the weather is warm, wine becomes just another thirst quencher. Roses are fun to drink in the summer and accord with a mentality that doesn’t want to be overly detained by the wine in the glass. But I love a certain style of red that is sapid, savoury, loaded with fruit, fairly high in acidity, low in tannin. The following selection repay an hour’s chilling in a fridge or ten to fifteen in an ice bucket.

2009 Vin d’Oeillades, Domaine Thierry Navarre
This rare red grape (close relative of the Cinsault) flickers with delicate red fruits. A vrai wine of the country, limber, fresh, all in the fruit, all in the glancing moment, naturally vibrant. Definitely worth a second glance (or oeillade as we say in the Languedoc)

2009 Saint-Nicolas de Bourgueil Hurluberlu, Domaine Sebastien David
Cabernet Franc carbonic style. Bursting with gobs of youthful purple fruit, a whiff of pepper. Totally unfiltered.

2009 La Mule, Domaine Chahuts et Prodiges
Natural velvety Gamay with a hint of smoky reduction. La Mule is one of the most acquiescent Gamays you are likely to taste. It exemplifies everything that it is fun and pleasurable about the grape with its simple freshness and juicy vitality.

2009 Bourgueil Trinch, Domaine Catherine et Pierre Breton
Clink! Tender fruity style of Cabernet Franc. Focused and pure, with a snappy beam of tobacco running through the dark cherry and damson plum fruit flavours. Offers lingering spice and olive hints on the finish.

2009 Cheverny rouge, Clos du Tue Bœuf
Gamay/Pinot blend. Beautiful fresh raspberry fruit with a suggestion of gaminess.

2009 Gamay Raisins Gaulois, Marie Lapierre
Redcurrants and cranberries to the fore, lovely fresh Gamay as nature intended.

2009 La Soif du Mal, Domaine des Foulards Rouge
Syrah/Grenache from low yields. Almost lean and crisp with some savoury white pepper flavours

2009 Souterronne, Domaine Romaneaux-Destezet
The depth of colour of this wine is sensational and the nose billows out of the glass to reveal fresh red and dark fruits. The palate is something else - this is a truly superb Gamay with a lovely mineral edge as if granite had melted seamlessly into a wine.

2008 Lard des Choix Rouge, Les Champs Libres
Effortlessly combines frivolity (imagine just crushed red grapes) and cheeky terroir notes of black olives sand pepper

2009 Poignee des Raisins, Domaine Gramenon
Smells and tastes of grapes, skins, leaves and stems that have just been tossed into the crusher. It is tremendously bright, juicy and vinous with plenty of youthful exuberance. Sappily green and alive, happy and comfortable in its low sulphur, slippery, silky feel and up-front nature.

2009 Frappato, COS
Frappato is the other grape of Vittoria, but it gives Cerasuolos their wonderfully aromatic bouquet of candied cherry and raspberry cane. Tasted blind you might place this red either in the northern Rhone or Burgundy – its weight (12%), its aromatic profile (violets and red berries), its lack of tannin all suggest a cooler climate than a part of Sicily which is further south than the northernmost tip of Africa.

2007 Carso Teran, Zidarich
Truly paregoric potation, fabulously digestible as if iron-filings had been distilled into the wine and made into a blood-enriching medicine. At 12% it is as bracingly refreshing as a white wine. You can smell the terroir: sea breeze over bloody red soil and karst limestone, whilst the fruit almost chews itself in your mouth, the acidity encourages a good roll-around and a ripe tartness engages and sooths the tongue simultaneously. Red fruits? You bet your sweet bippy. Fragolino, cherries, sloes, bitter raspberries gush effortlessly across the palate. The tannins are so fine they barely seem to exist.

2009 Marcillac Lo Sang del Pais, Domaine du Cros
Lithe red fruit that keeps delivering the goods. Graphite and slate on the nose, delicate red fruits with fugitive notes of paprika and fennel, cool acidity with condensed iron filing minerality to round off.

2009 Gamay d’Auvergne, Domaine Maupertuis
Slightly cloudy with an aroma of barnyard when it is first opened. This dissipates quickly, but leaves behind a topsoil smell that remains to accompany the raspberry notes. Sour cherry and pomegranate seed flavours are accompanied with earthiness too. This is a Gamay as nature intended, organic, unfiltered and unsulphured, as prickly as a hedgehog with ants in his pants, a dark pickled damson strut across the tongue, and you should drink it with alacrity from a pot lyonnais with some tripoux or ”Truffade” a baked mixture of sliced potatoes and Tome de Cantal.

2008 Raboso Marca Trevigiana, Gatti Lorenzo
The gum-tingling Raboso is fermented on the skins for at least 10 days with frequent manual remuage in cement tank with indigenous yeasts and without temperature control. After a gentle pressing the wine stays tanks before being bottled without clarification or filtration. The wine weighs in at a slimline 11% and is enormous fun to drink.