16-05-2025
The best picnic wines to drink alfresco
The great outdoors, with insects and fluctuating temperatures, rain one minute and brilliant sunshine the next, is no place for fine wine. Whether you are heading to the beach or your back garden, serving anything priced more than £15 a bottle is a complete waste of money. Frankly, most of the time I stick to £10 and below for alfresco bottles, whether it's a swanky picnic or a simple barbecue. That's principally because getting the temperature right with bottles drunk outside is hard. Serve your chosen wine too cold and the fruit and flavour is damped down; too hot, however, and whites and reds will taste flabby and aggressively alcoholic.
Stick wines that cost less than £10 in the fridge overnight, wrap them in wet
