It is thirty degrees, the flat has the ambience of a greenhouse, and you have just poured a red at what the label optimistically calls room temperature. It is warm. It tastes of stewed fruit and regret. Somewhere, a rule is being obeyed that was written for a very different room.

The short answer: yes, some of them

Chilling red wine is not heresy. It is one of the great small upgrades to summer drinking, and much of the wine world has been quietly doing it for years. The key word is cool, not cold. You are not trying to freeze the thing into submission; you are taking the edge off the heat so the fruit reads fresh and the wine feels alive rather than flabby.

Which reds love the fridge

Reach for the light, low-tannin, high-acid reds. Think Pinot Noir, Gamay, Barbera, Frappato, and the fresher end of Italy and the Loire. These wines are built on perfume and brightness rather than muscle, and a gentle chill makes them positively dance. A juicy Barbera from Piedmont, say Punset's organic Barbera d'Alba, comes alive with twenty minutes in the fridge: all red cherry and crunch, no heaviness at all.

Lighter Pinot Noir is the classic candidate. Something like Jermann's Red Angel, a supple, perfumed Pinot from north-east Italy, is arguably better with a slight chill than without: the cool tightens the fruit and lifts the whole thing off the table. If in doubt, a red you would describe as elegant rather than powerful is almost always a chilling red.

Which reds to leave alone

Big, tannic, structured reds do not enjoy the cold. Barolo, mature Cabernet, Bordeaux, brooding Syrah: chill these and the tannins go hard and bitter, the aromatics shut down, and a wine that cost you dearly sulks in the glass. These want a genuinely cool room, or the modern reality of a couple of degrees below a warm one, but not the fridge. If the wine is about power and structure, keep it warm.

How cold, exactly

Aim for around 13 to 15 degrees for a chillable red, a few degrees cooler than most rooms in summer and a few degrees warmer than your whites. In practice that means twenty to thirty minutes in the fridge, or about ten in an ice bucket if the doorbell has already gone. Pull it out before it feels cold to the touch; it will keep warming in the glass, and you want it to open up as you drink, not clam shut.

So yes, chill the red. Pick the right one, keep it cool rather than cold, and let the summer heat become the excuse it always should have been. The only real mistake is the warm glass of stewed fruit. Everything after that is just good sense in a heatwave.