RED WINE

Red wine is the biggest, deepest category in the store, and the easiest to navigate once you stop thinking in grape names and start thinking in body. Light on one end, full on the other — every bottle here sits somewhere along that line, and where it sits tells you what to drink it with and how to serve it. Our red wine shelf runs from ten-dollar weeknight bottles to Napa icons with real cellar potential, organized by what the wine actually does at the table.

Light and bright

These are the food-friendly reds — pale, high in acid, low in tannin, and lovely with a slight chill. Meiomi Pinot Noir ($24.99) is the plush California crowd-pleaser that converts red-wine skeptics, and Decoy Blue Pinot Noir ($33.99) brings brighter Sonoma fruit. Pinot Noir is the grape to know here: it drinks with salmon, chicken and charcuterie as happily as on its own.

Medium and savory

The middle of the spectrum is where red wine does its best work with dinner. Gagliole Valletta Toscana ($36.99) is a Tuscan Sangiovese blend built for red sauce — sour cherry and savory grip. El Enemigo Malbec ($27.99) is a benchmark Argentine Malbec, plush with blackberry and violet over an umami depth that punches well above its price.

Full and structured

Dark, dense, tannic and built to age — the wines for steak, lamb and cold weather. Josh Cellars Cabernet ($19.09) is the astonishing sub-$20 value entry, and Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon ($79.99) is the opulent, dark-chocolate-rich Napa icon everyone recognizes.

How to serve and where to go next

Serve reds cooler than you think — light reds around 55°F, big Cabernets around 60–65°F — and give young, full-bodied bottles thirty minutes of air. Our complete red wine buying guide walks the full light-to-full spectrum with eight bottles and the rules for picking well, and the wine and cheese pairing guide puts several of these reds against the cheeses they were made for. When you want the other side of the cellar, cross-shop the white wine, rosé and sparkling wine collections, or browse the full parent wine collection.