Vintners of France’s Bordeaux region warm to chilling red wines

Changing drinking habits and climate change are driving the acceptance of refrigerated reds in the grand French region.

The anathema of refrigeration has now been embraced by the vintners of the grand region of Bordeaux. Picture: EPA/The Times

Asking for chilled red wine used to be a faux pas like that of the Bond villain in From Russia with Love who gave himself away by ordering red with his fish.

In France, that thinking was jettisoned along with the 20th century for the likes of Beaujolais and the lighter reds of Burgundy and the Loire. Both are widely served cool – and with fish. Now the anathema of refrigeration has been embraced by the vintners of the grand region of Bordeaux.

A range of regional appellation reds are for the first time on display along with the whites and roses in the chilled wine pavilion at the Bordeaux Wine Festival, a celebration by 1000 producers and merchants along a kilometre of the banks of the Garonne river that began on Thursday.

Sud Ouest, the regional newspaper, said: “From now on, le rouge has its place in the fridge, from 30 minutes to an hour before opening the bottle … The notion of room or ambient temperature has lost its meaning.”

Bordeaux producers are under pressure from crumbling demand, changing drinking habits and climate change.

They are shifting to unusual grape blends and adopting new methods that produce fruitier, lighter wine. Among these, wineries are fermenting reds in terracotta jars and stainless steel vats used for whites rather than oak barrels.

The trend to the cool and the lighter is regarded as a lifeline for the mass of lower-end producers in Bordeaux. Picture: EPA/The Times

By shifting to a lighter character, they are turning the clock back to the middle ages, when the wines of Bordeaux were made to be drunk young and were known as clairet, a term that was adopted in English as claret. In Britain, the term came to denote all Bordeaux reds, while in France the style evolved into a type of rose.

Enthusiasts for cool red should not get carried away, the experts say.

“A spell in the fridge is particularly for the fruitier wines,” Cyril Bleeker, a sommelier and instructor at a Bordeaux wine school, said. Younger, fruitier Bordeaux should be drunk at 14-16 degrees while the stronger, more complex reds deserve 16-18 degrees.

“The expression ‘drink at room temperature’ goes back to the age when rooms were not heated and were about 16 degrees while they are around 21 degrees nowadays.”

Bordeaux is suffering from 20 per cent overproduction, and outside the grands crus that command huge prices, the average supermarket price for a Bordeaux red is €6 (about $9.70). The trend to lighter wine is seen as a lifeline for the mass of lower-end Bordeaux producers.

The Times