It’s hot, it’s humid, so what red do you drink in our traditional holiday month of August? It needs to be a wine that can be chilled right down with ice cubes, or soda water, or both, in a pretty pink spritzer. Chameleon-like, the ideal summer-holiday red also needs to work with the spicy, garlicky hot-weather salads and charcuterie and burnt, barbecued fare most of us eat now. It should be a red, too, with the strength of character to cope with the great outdoors when the fine nuances of a good claret or red burgundy and their ilk get carried away with the wind.

Step forward the crunchy yet light, rapidly maturing, redcurrant and raspberry-styled fruit of the distinctly herby cabernet franc grape – still relatively unsung in the wine world, though this is changing. Cabernet franc’s most famous role is the part it plays in the classic Bordeaux mix: only a dollop in left-bank clarets, but on the right bank this grape can account for over half the blend and more in great châteaux like Cheval Blanc. Claret is not the ideal summer swig but, elsewhere in France, the cabernet franc-based reds of the Loire, from appellations such as Saumur-Champigny and Anjou-Villages, along with Chinon and Bourgueil, are perfect warm weather wines, with lots of vibrant red fruit and blackcurrant leaf flavours. It helps to pinpoint cabernet franc’s distinctive style if you know that cabernet sauvignon’s parent grapes are the gooseberry and flowering currant-charged sauvignon blanc and cabernet franc. Southwest France has heaps of cabernet franc, as does northeast Italy, although the variety rarely appears on labels.

Outside France, bordeaux-aping blends pop up plentifully in California and, to a lesser extent, in other New World wine spots such as South Africa and the Antipodes. For me, a much more summery and distinctive take on this beguiling red grape are the solo versions made in Chile and Argentina – the best are liquid versions of summer pudding.

Start at the hard end of cabernet franc appreciation with a classic Loire red, 2006 Saumur Rouge, Les Nivières (Waitrose, £5.99) – its restrained alcohol content and lively, yet fat, ripe fruit closes on a fine verdant finish. Similar in style is the 2007 Saumur-Champigny Cuvée Soliterre (Oddbins, £8.99), with dusky spice and lots of inky fruit. Twenty pence less gets you a single-vineyard Loire red, Charles Joguet’s 2006 Petites Roches Chinon, with delightful, smouldering, herby, laurel leaf and redcurrant fruit (Waitrose, £8.79). If it’s top dog cabernet franc you want, buy Frédéric Mabileau’s 2005 Bourgueil Racines, which bursts with ripe, spicy redcurranty fruit (selected Waitrose, £11.99), or the scrumptious, crimson, spicy, violet-scented style of 2006 Doña Paula Alluvia Cabernet Franc from Argentina (Oddbins, £11.99).

Summer in a glass.

jane.macquitty@thetimes.co.uk

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