When it comes to choosing a wine to serve with grilled meat or veg, it pays to think outside the box
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n one section of my first book, Corker: A Deeply Unserious Wine Book, I sought to address the single-biggest DM slide I get every summer: what wines to bring to a barbecue. And the reason this is my most common request is pretty simple: where I live, in London, being invited to a barbecue means you have a friend with a garden, whereas most of us are concertinaed into blocks of flats and house shares.
The prospect of spending a hot afternoon outdoors and with a glass of something delicious is far more delightful than the idea of spending it in my sweaty room surrounded by black clothing (an excellent heat-insulating technique, by the way), especially if it involves an actual garden and generous pals. That’s an occasion to which you want to bring a bottle of something good.
In the book, I suggested a red Côtes du Rhône, and the thinking behind that is also simple: Côtes du Rhône is sublime when drunk slightly chilled (drag it out of the ice bucket 10 minutes before you want to pour), it pairs well with most things that you can chuck on a barbecue, and you can buy more than one bottle without completely rinsing your bank account. See also: gamay, barbera, barbaresco, pinot noir, malbec and darker rosés.
