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The Infatuation
Where To Go When Drinking Chilled Reds Is Your Whole Personality
By Heidi Lauth Beasley,
13 hours ago
The pét-nat you wanted isn’t available and so sure, a chilled red. Sounds like sacrilege. But… hello… another sip... another glass. Before you know it, you’re whispering about “joyful minerality” to an unsuspecting stranger, misguidedly icing bottles of Campo Viejo, and contemplating whether a Love Bite logo tattoo might actually be a really, really good idea. Sound familiar? You’ve got the chilled red fever, baby. Here’s where to go when you want everyone to know that you’re into sipping something cool and sexily carmine.
Please note, many of the wine bars featured in this guide have men’s names. Dan’s. Henny’s. Elliot’s. We have no explanation for this and can only presume that a drunk witch put a sexy little chilled reds curse on wine bars so they sound like a roster of Eton graduates.
If you happen to like white wine, something ‘funky’, or shockingly, red wine at room temperature, find them all in our guide toLondon’s Best Wine Bars.
This bottle shop and wine bar in Kentish Town is where London’s chilled red wine supernovas learn their low tannin ABCs. The co-owner manages the big boy wine lists at Noble Rot and Mountain and this place offers a day-to-night chilled red trajectory. By day, you can stop by for a ready-to-chill bottle and accidentally drop 40 quid on meme-coded merch and nibbles. By night, you can blame the upbeat ‘90s playlist for the fact you compared a Lamoresca to a Spice Girl.
Every chiller—insider term, don’t mind us—has an origin story. Ours involves Sol’s, a holiday-feel Bayswater wine bar that’s home to the ruby Côtes du Rhône that convinced us to pursue a life dedicated to low-degree and low-intervention chat. Outside of the must-order Carambouille, sitting at the bar by the big bay windows, twirling your glass, and nibbling on a gilda is one of our favourite ways to pretend we’re Greta Garbo in the midst of a hot affair with grenache noir.
Elliot’s is an idyllic wine bar that overlooks Borough Market and it will rob you of the opportunity to say “you don’t happen to have any chilled reds available, do you?”, because there’s already a dedicated section of the wine list. We know. It hurts. Try talking about the weather or something charming like your council’s latest recycling bin policy. If vino trust falls aren’t your thing or your wine knowledge surpasses knowing how to use a corkscrew, the staff here really know their stuff and are happy to get a bit soil and sulfites nerdy with you.
On the wall at Dan’s—a great little neighbourhood wine bar in Dalston—there’s a framed poster of a red blob person sitting on a wine glass while holding a bottle of red aloft like it’s a microphone. It’s nice to see someone living your dream. This place feels like the buzzing living room of your coolest friend who has a thing for house plants and restoring original fireplaces. Sit knee-to-knee with someone you fancy, pick at a plate of comté, and let the handy, layman’s wine descriptors—think ‘easy skinsy’ or ‘turbo chilled red’—guide your order. If you prefer your ‘fun skinsys’ in a more sit-down, dressed-up setting, head to Dan’s Clerkenwell brother, Ken’s.
“It’s really weird but I don’t get heartburn when I drink chilled reds” you say, on your fourth glass of chilled cabernet franc, while that pack of Rennie on your bedside table rolls its eyes. Excuses flourish at Henny’s, a Balham wine bar with mustard booths that will swallow you whole and a sincere understanding that sometimes you need to order in a Yard Sale pizza to keep your reflux myths afloat. Come after 8pm if you want as many locals as possible to hear your thoughts on chilled Loire lore.
A trip to Bar Levan is like living in the daydream of someone French, inherently sensual, and whose safeword is ‘biodynamic’. The colour scheme of this intimate Peckham wine bar is best described as Beaujolais red and it’ll work for mates, dates, and eating dainty anchovies in the presence of a ‘vintage sound system’ and someone who is also contemplating investing in a Coravin. It’s open until 1am on Fridays and Saturdays, so you have plenty of time to savour enough glacial glugs of red that your 2022 personality headliner, a Negroni, starts to call your name.
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