Our Domestic Buyer’s Chillable Red Roundup

Chillable reds have been very much in vogue over the past couple of years. These light, bright, crushable wines are often quite translucent in the glass and drink beautifully at cool cellar temperature, around 55-60°F, or even properly chilled like a white or rosé, closer to 45-50°F.

Living in California and enjoying our generally moderate-to-warm climate, I personally love wines in this style. I’ve also long preferred serving even fuller-bodied reds notably cooler than ambient room temperature—something we sometimes jokingly call “castle temperature,” rather than modern-day room temperature, which is often 70°F or higher.

In today’s wine market, the lines between dark rosé and light red continue to blur. Many light “red” wines incorporate significant amounts of white grapes as producers look to make refreshing, quaffable wines that are versatile, playful, and easy to enjoy.

Personally, I just hope producers don’t jump on the bandwagon and start making wines in this style simply for the sake of chasing a trend. Although these wines are often portrayed as carefree and easy-going, producing them successfully isn’t always so simple. I’ve seen plenty of attempts fall pretty flat, with bitterness, excessive herbaceousness, disjointed acidity, and other flaws creeping in. When done right, though, these wines can be wonderfully aromatic, fresh, crunchy, and vibrant. They can combine the verve and zestiness of white wines with the fleshier mid-palate texture and fruity buoyancy of reds, all in one gulpable glass.

Here are some of my favorite wines in this category that I highly recommend:

Itri Cellars “Chillable Red” Central Coast Red Blend $19.95 We’ve carried the first few renditions of Itri Cellars from longtime friend of K&L Casey O’Brien, and the latest Chillable Red is about as close to a perfect rendition of this genre as you can get. Beautiful color, pure, soaring aromatics, and flowing flavors of spiced berries, currant leaf, star anise, alpine strawberry, and citrus peel. Crushable, versatile, and very well priced given the quality. You really can’t go wrong here.

2025 Las Jaras “Slipper Sippers” California Red Blend $19.95 Longtime champions of more esoteric styles, it’s no surprise that Las Jaras has dialed in its chilled-red game with releases like Slipper Sippers. Made in a Beaujolais Nouveau-inspired style, a significant portion of the fruit is fermented using carbonic maceration. Here, though, the traditional Gamay grape is replaced with old-vine Zinfandel from 80+ year-old vines in Lodi.

Although most people associate Zinfandel with big, ripe, jammy, full-bodied wines, the grape can retain plenty of acidity when picked a little earlier and has huge potential for making deliciously fruity yet delightfully tart, light-bodied reds. That has been perfectly accomplished here with a wine that definitely flirts with the boundary between dark rosé and light red. Whatever you call it, this is delicious, highly quaffable wine from a team at the top of its game.

2023 Hayfork Mendocino County Carignan $19.95 This wine can certainly be enjoyed unchilled as a traditional medium-bodied red, but its floral aromatics and bright, juicy red fruit also make it a perfect candidate for a little time in the fridge. It’s sourced from an old parcel of Carignan planted in the 1950s in Ukiah, Mendocino County.

Carignan has an uncanny ability to produce fresh, vibrant wines even in warm, arid climates, and I really love what the Hayfork team has done with this wonderfully playful and downright delicious red. The vineyard is farmed by a fifth-generation farming family, and the wine is matured entirely in neutral oak to preserve the purity and focus of the fruit.

2024 Ellsworth El Dorado County Grenache $29.95 At a tasting in San Francisco recently, I was introduced to the super-fun range of wines from Ellsworth, a husband-and-wife team producing tiny amounts of wine largely from Nevada County in the Sierra Foothills. This particular bottling comes from neighboring El Dorado County and the renowned Fenaughty Vineyard.

Sitting at 2,800 feet in elevation on granite and clay-loam soils, these 40-year-old vines produce a highly perfumed, layered expression of Grenache. It’s made in a minimal-intervention style, but with impressive purity and wonderful transparency of varietal expression. Bright, lifted, and a natural fit for serving with a slight chill.

2025 Turley “Bechthold Vineyard” Lodi Cinsault $29.95 Perhaps not a wine that immediately comes to mind when you think of chillable reds, but this is most definitely a bottle that should be served at a cool cellar temperature for maximum enjoyment. I look forward to its release every year and always hope there’s still some around by Thanksgiving (I really should plan ahead better).

Quite different in style from many of Turley’s wines, which tend to be bigger, riper, and fuller-bodied, the Bechthold Cinsault comes from own-rooted, dry-farmed, ancient vines in west Lodi planted in 1886. This block is believed to be the oldest surviving planting of Cinsault in the world. These monstrous, gnarled vines grow in Tokay fine sandy loam soils and produce large clusters of large berries that are perfectly suited to making lighter, more elegant, fresh wines.

Winemaker Tegan Passalacqua ferments the wine with native yeast and gives it a short, seven-month élevage entirely in neutral oak. A perennial favorite for me.

2024 Samuel Louis Smith “Baytree Lane Vineyard” Sonoma Valley Gamay Noir $32.95 We’re down to our last few cases of this stunning Gamay from Samuel Louis Smith. Truly one of my wines of the year so far, and a perfect candidate for chilling down a little and enjoying on a warm evening.

This Gamay Noir is grown on red volcanic soils above the town of Sonoma. The wine has the perfect combination of bright, upfront red fruit—think ripe raspberry, pomegranate, and alpine strawberry - along with baking spices, a hint of black pepper, dried rose petal, hot volcanic stone, and bramble leaf.

Elegant, light-to-medium-bodied, and translucent in the glass, yet packed with flavor, it has a refined, silky texture on the palate. I’ve drunk this wine several times over the past few months, and it never fails to impress.

- Ryan Woodhouse, K&L Domestic Wine Buyer