My first glass of rosé this year was not auspicious. First, it was raining. Second, the wine was a wrong ’un.
Made from grapes grown on the slopes of St Martin’s, one of the Scilly Isles, it was a stunning example of why there shouldn’t be vineyards plonked in the middle of the Atlantic.
The less said about it the better.
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Last week, when the sun came out, I tried again, and this time I took no risks.
I bought the single most reliable wine in the world for delivering the liquid sunshine thrills of rosé. Since it first appeared in Britain, MiP, or Made in Provence, has achieved a near fetishistic popularity with drinkers who love this pale, superlight and dry wine from the South of France. Its main British stockists had sold a third of its quota for this year before the sun even came out.
MiP is good, it’s a precise wine and well made. The colour is an achievement: the exact shade of a blushing diamond and the colour I’d like the stone in my engagement ring to be, if I ever get one.
Rosés like this are not complex wines. They are almost not wine at all. Some of the weightier rosés are more like light reds, but these delicate pink Provençal ones, the sort that take you to the Côte d’Azur in your head, always taste of delicate strawberry and vanilla. It has neither the acidity of a white or the tannins of a red. Rosé really is a sort of “not wine”.
I mean this with the greatest of love and respect for the stuff. Before its explosion in popularity in recent years, it was often made by winemakers for the family and staff, as something lighter and easier to drink with meals than the weightier, grander stuff made to sell. Anyone snobby about rosé can be cut down to size with an “Actually, darling, I think you’ll find it’s what the winemakers drink”.
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Rosé is like champagne in that it comes with its own dream. MiP’s makers at Domaine Sainte Lucie know this. The design and branding has the marketing nous that has gone into the champagnes developed by the big luxury house LVMH, including Veuve Clicquot and Dom Pérignon, which approaches the selling of champagne much as it does a Louis Vuitton handbag.
MiP sells a methuselah that is way more expensive than the eight bottles it contains, but as a look-at-me statement, it is pure fun. Until autumn comes again, only a bloody bore doesn’t drink pink.
Liquid hunches
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Made in Provence 2011 (£11) Strawberries, cream, redcurrant and vanilla (leaandsanderman.co.uk).
Château Plaisance Rosé (£11) Organic and floral, rather than fruity; works with rain (lescaves.co.uk).
Alois Lageder, Lagrein Rosato 2012 (£12.50) A serious pink for manly drinkers (nezzar.com).