Kicking off with a very reasonably priced Australian Pinot Noir has to be a good way to start any new year. It should also be a welcome one if you want a lighter red after the heavyweight festivities, or if you want to hunker down in the northern hemisphere, but with thoughts of summer rather than winter

Made from 55-year-old vines at the historic Château de Pizay estate in an outstanding vintage for Beaujolais, this 2023 Régnié is beautifully expressive, with a lustrous deep ruby-red colour and succulent cassis and strawberry fruit. It could be on the table on Christmas day and would make a great red wine for Boxing Day.

This Rioja Reserva has already featured in my Festive Red Wine Guide 2025, but it’s so good, so appropriate for Christmas and also relatively widely available that I’m revisiting it here

Welcome to my round-up of 58 red wines for the 2025 festive season. It's designed to cover all occasions, eventualities and tastes, ranging freely through styles and grape varieties, from classic to contemporary, old to young, and across continents and regions to far-flung corners

This typically dark and inky looking Georgian Saperavi has deep, briary blackberry and damson fruit, peppery, meaty undertones, a whisper of violets and salty tannins softened to just the right degree by brief oak ageing

This is a wonderful old-vine red wine made in a traditional way by accomplished oenologists, husband and wine Jorge Serôdio Borges and Sandra Tavares de Silva, at the tiny estate around an old port warehouse that they bought in the Pinhão Valley in the Douro in 2003.

Red Burgundy is never going to be cheap but, if you know where to look, it can be good value, especially from less famous appellations. Domaine Machard de Gramont Hautes-Côtes de Beaune 2023 makes the case eloquently.

Wines made from Cabernet Franc often feature as good reds for summer because they can be lightly chilled, but that doesn’t mean they have to be served from the fridge or only in the summer. Finca Lalande The Land Cabernet Franc is a delight when lightly chilled, but it’s a fuller bodied example than many and works well at this time of year and through the winter served at around 17ºC

If summer comes back this year, Tenuta Cappellina Chianti Classico will be just the wine to greet it. If autumn sets in, it will still be just the red to have in your glass.

Rébus is a deep coloured, medium-bodied red Gaillac with crunchy hedgerow berry fruit, herbal and black pepper notes and appetising freshness. If you like Loire Cabernet Franc, you’ll like this wine – and it can be paired with seared salmon as well as meat

This Crozes-Hermitage Syrah is a beauty: deep ruby, with floral, spicy, sweet earth and red berry aromas and a palate with the characteristic peppery, iron-oxide Crozes tang complementing succulent, pure, cherry, raspberry and wild strawberry fruit and a fine-boned structure

Ringbolt is a classic example of Margaret River’s pure and focused style of Cabernet Sauvignon and it's at a keen price for this premium Western Australian wine region. It's ready to drink now, but you could also cellar it for five years.

This is a wine that offers a more unusual, great value alternative to some better known, more expensive red wines, namely Beaujolais-Villages, Pinot Noir and Etna Rosso

In a nod to Bastille Day, I’m giving this slot over to a classic French red wine this week, but the real reason is that this is such a good and good value red Bordeaux, with lovely mature flavours as well as ripe reducrrant and bramble fruit

It wouldn’t be summer if I didn’t fall in love with Loire Valley Cabernet Franc all over again and Château de Fesles La Chapelle Anjou is one of this year’s favourites, with cassis and raspberry flavors mingling currant-leaf, herb and graphite coolness and freshness

£14.95, Yapp Brothers To celebrate settling into my usual haunt north of Cahors in southwest France, I'm dedicating this week's slot to...

Among several good reasons for trying this wine is that it’s excellent value. Another is that it’s an opportunity to try something different if you’re not familiar with Austria's Zweigelt grape variety or with Austrian red wines in general. The best reason, though, is the simplest. It’s delicious.

This cheerful, deep crimson Bergerac is all about fruit and smoothness and is a French wine bargain

This bright, juicy, organic red from Almansa, Spain is a new wine and the first biodynamic wine from Gil Family estates

This quality of this rich, silky Languedoc wine soars above many more famous Southern French reds