The sun is out. It’s summer. Things are heating up. This means it’s time to change up your wine drinking to accommodate the weather and your more frequent time outside.. Being all-climate wine lovers here at WineBid, we’ve got a strategy and suggestions for getting your hands on the best wines for the Summer.

The key to the summer sipping strategy is letting the Bordeaux, the Cabernet and other richly structured reds continue to age through the summer months and switch to a lighter style of wine. 

Keep in mind, some of the most famed wine growing regions in the world experience hot summer days. And even in the most famous of regions wine drinking never stops. It just adapts.

GERMAN WHITES

German whites with their refreshing character and higher acids drink wonderfully when slightly chilled, losing none of their unique characters. They are outstanding summer sippers. Riesling is going to be the most common German white to bring out to the patio. Appearing in a variety of manifestations, the Kabinett and Spatlese versions are best suited for drinking through the summer.

SPARKLING WINE

Showing their best at a temperature of 40 to 50 degrees, sparkling must be in your summer sipping arsenal. Served at the right temperature and with their quenching fizz, sparklers from around the world work at the pool, the beach or on the patio on a warm summer evening. Your first stop should be with the French sparklers. Here, Champagne is clearly the wine of choice. And while the large Champagne house with their ubiquitous brands are always reliable choices, know that the region produces a large variety of other bottlings including grower Champagnes and wines from smaller houses. Moreover, you can go with the most famed bottlings, but you can also find Champagne options that are lower priced and every bit as refreshing. 

Outside Champagne but still in France  look for the Cremants from Burgundy, which do not rise to the prices of Champagne but provide beautiful drinking and will serve equally to help cool you down on summer days.

But you can find lovely sparkling wines from across the globe, all of which are candidates for serving in the summer. California, Spain and Italy are all sources of beautiful sparklers. California produces sparkling wine from both French-owned properties as well as indiginous examples that many insist compare with Champagne’s best. From Spain look for Cava. Italy is home to sparkling wines that originate from up and down the peninsula. Finally, England, Australia and other winemaking regions increasingly provide sparklers of outstanding quality and value that often appear at WineBid.

CHARDONNAY

Arguably the most versatile wine in the world, Chardonnay comes in a variety of styles many of which are perfectly suitable for sipping in a summer breeze. Our first recommendation are those Chardonnays that tend to be crisper in character. Burgundy comes to mind first and foremost. The great white Burgundies from Chablis would be particularly good choices. But we also see the virtue of quenching a thirst with the great Chardonnay-based wines from Meursault, Corton-Charlemagne, Santenay and Chevalier-Montrachet.

Similarly styled, crisp, complex Chardonnay can also be found from the great wine growing regions of the West Coast of the U.S. California, Oregon and Washington all produce remarkable Chardonnays at a variety of price points. In particular we recommend wines from California’s Sonoma Coast and Mendocino regions, from Oregon’s Willamette Valley and from Washington’s Woodinville and Walla Walla regions. All these wines can be chilled to 55-60 degrees and still retain their rich flavors while delivering us the refreshing quality we demand in response to warm summer days.

ROSE

There’s just no sense in denying the appeal of Rosé on a warm, relaxing summer day. The very image of a glass filled with pink and orange-hued wine shouts “summer!" And with the surge in interest in these wines the choices now abound. While France’s Languedoc and Provence regions had long been and remain the go-to choice for Rosé, today you can find classic examples from California, Oregon, Spain, Italy and other regions around the globe. Rosé can be chilled to 45-55 degrees and still maintain its fruity, refreshing and crisp character that makes it perhaps the most classic example of a summer sipping wine.

Summer, with its warm temperatures, sunshine and its beckoning for us to move the party outside is not reason to forgo great wines. Choose the right wine and chill it appropriately and Summer becomes a time when we can continue our choice to bring wine to all moments of our lives.

Here’s to Summer Sipping!