This Sunday, at two in the morning, the clocks go back an hour and the whole country quietly changes gear. You get the hour in bed, which is the good news. You also get darkness by half past four, a damp chill that works its way into the brickwork, and a general sense that the year has turned its collar up against the weather. Summer drinking is over. The bottle you reach for should know it.

For months the fridge has done the heavy lifting. Crisp whites, pale rosé, the odd chilled red if you were feeling continental about it. All of it built for long light and warm evenings, none of it much use once the heating clicks on and a stew goes in the oven. What the dark half of the year wants is a proper winter red: something with weight, a little warmth, and enough structure to stand up to the food you actually cook when it gets cold.

The seasonal handover

There is no ceremony to it, but there should be. The rosé that made such sense on a July afternoon goes to the back of the rack. The bright, mineral whites step aside, or at least retreat to lunchtimes and lighter suppers. In their place comes the kind of bottle you want to drink with your hands wrapped around the glass. This is not about drinking worse wine as the nights draw in. It is about drinking the right wine for a plate of something braised and a room with the lamps on.

What makes a winter red

A winter red is not simply a red you happen to open in winter. It is a particular sort of wine: deeper, darker fruit, a little more body, often a savoury or spiced edge, and the kind of grip that makes it feel like dinner rather than a warm-up. Think black fruit over red, a twist of pepper or clove, tannins that give the thing a backbone. These are the bottles that taste better beside a casserole than a barbecue, and they come properly alive at a sensible room temperature, not straight off a cold rack.

The reassuring part is that you do not need to spend a fortune, and you certainly do not need to overthink it. Two bottles will carry you through most of the season. One for the weeknights, when dinner is quick and the bar is set at comfort. One for the weekend, when something is roasting and the table has filled up. Get both of those right and the dark months rather look after themselves.

The Tuesday bottle

For the everyday pour, reach for Garnacha. Spain's warm-hearted grape (Grenache, when you meet it in the Rhône) does exactly what a winter weeknight asks: ripe red and black fruit, a lick of pepper and dried herb, warmth without heaviness. The Atalaque Las Cárcavas Garnacha comes from old vines on the stony, sun-struck slopes of Méntrida, south-west of Madrid, and it is the sort of bottle you open purely for the joy of it. Strawberry and black cherry, that little peppery twist, silky and light on its feet. For under fourteen pounds it is a Tuesday-night red with a genuine sense of place. Give it the faintest chill if the kitchen is warm, and pour it with lamb chops or anything that has seen a grill.

The one for the weekend

When the week ends and the oven is doing proper work, step up to Malbec. Argentina's signature grape was made for cold weather and generous plates: dark, plush and confident, all blackberry and plum. The Catena Zapata Argentino Malbec is Malbec taken about as seriously as anyone in Argentina takes it, drawn from the family's oldest and highest vineyards, where cold mountain nights keep the fruit perfumed rather than jammy. Expect blackberry, violet and cocoa, fine tannins, and a finish that stays fresh long after you would expect a wine this rich to tire. It was scored 93 by James Suckling, for anyone keeping count, though it carries the compliment lightly. Decant it for an hour, pour it with a rare ribeye, and let the weekend begin properly.

Serve it like you mean it

The commonest mistake with winter reds is serving them too warm. Room temperature is a phrase from the age of draughty country houses, not centrally heated flats, and a big red poured at a cosy twenty-one degrees tastes flat and hot. Aim closer to eighteen for the Malbec, a touch cooler for the Garnacha, which takes a light chill beautifully. If a bottle has been standing by the radiator, twenty minutes in the fridge will do it a great deal of good. We have gone on about this at greater length elsewhere, for the quietly obsessed.

Going deeper

Once the weeknight and the weekend are settled, the dark months are the best possible time to push into the serious end of the red-wine world. Barolo rewards both the cold and your patience. Tuscany's reds, from an honest Chianti to the grand Super Tuscans, might as well have been designed for the winter table. And if you want the definitive cold-weather red, the one with thirteen grapes and a fire built into it, Châteauneuf-du-Pape is standing by. Every one of them is happier now than it was in July.

Last pour

The clocks going back is a small, slightly strange national ritual: an hour handed back, a season quietly turned over. You can treat it as a loss, all that daylight vanishing before teatime. Or you can treat it as permission. Permission to cook something slow, to light something warm, and to open a bottle with a bit of weight to it. The long evenings are not a punishment. They are an invitation, and a winter red is how you accept. Pour accordingly.