Lose your heart on Valentine’s Day, not your head. With big-name (but often little taste) pink champagne fetching upwards of £200 a pop, lovers intent on celebrations need to keep their wits about them. It is not just blushing bubbles of which they should beware. I for one do not want to find in my glass Tesco’s evil and sweaty 2007 Darling Sauvignon Blanc from South Africa, £4.99, or Wild Rock’s earthy and thin 2006 Cupid’s Arrow Pinot Noir from New Zealand, £9.95. Nor do I want to knock back £9.99’s worth of Marks & Spencer’s mouthwash-redolent and mouthwash-coloured Think Pink Gin “with natural cranberry flavouring”. Saying no to all those sickly chocolate and champagne combos will be easy-peasy – ditto any wine accompanied by a cuddly bear.
Having ploughed through almost 50 different bottles for this article, most of which made me feel queasy, the one oddity I did succumb to was Marks & Spencer’s soft, peppery, berry-scented, aperitif-suitable Pink Port, only £6.39 for 50cl until February 14. It is the first of its ilk, a variation on a young ruby port and unsurprisingly took three years to get authorisation.
Cheapskate Lotharios will be in Tesco scooping up as much of Cordorniu’s cut-price 2005 Vintage Cava Ros?, £4.99, as they can. Not as tasty a blend as it was last year but with sufficient earthy, raspberry spice to work, provided you serve it chilled. Rather better, sweeter, fruitier and less alcoholic at 11 per cent alcohol is Ravelli’s pleasant, frothy, strawberry-scented Prosecco Raboso, down £1.50 to £5.49 at Tesco until February 14. If it’s a good, ordinary, dry, food-suitable pink champagne you wish to share with your love on Valentine’s night, Tesco has the answer in the surprisingly good Heidsieck Monopole Brut Ros? Top Champagne, £19.99 until February 14. The bottle I tasted had been aged, but its fat, ripe, nutty palate stood the test of time. There are few decent pinks worth drinking over at Sainsbury’s, but one silky, seductive, cut-price red worth diving into is the wondrous 2006 Taste the Difference Beaujolais Villages, whose spicy, velvety, cherry-charged fruit is only £4.99 until March 4.
With so many luxury pink champagnes on sale now, it is hard to know which to choose. Frankly, Krug Brut Ros? at £190 a throw is as dreary and faintly savoury now as it always was, and Bollinger’s beefy 1999 La Grande Ann?e Ros? is not worth the £90 asked either. Far better to splash out on the much younger 2002 Louis Roederer Brut Vintage Ros?, whose refined, delicate, honeyed, rose-scented, pinot noir-dominated fruit and equally restrained price tag (Harrods, £54.95, or Fortnum & Mason and Harvey Nichols, £57.50) easily make it my best-buy vintage pink champagne. Romantic? You bet.