A Rosé by any other name...Just don't mention blush...

Remember your first glass of rosé? I remember mine. July 2001, Marseille. A mate and I went there for a few days.  It was hot, we got there in time for lunch, dumped our stuff and headed for the local bistro. I remember the bread and the wine. Lunch I must confess, I cannot remember, but I'd like to think it was a Salad Niçoise. In any case, we ordered "un Pichet”, ie, some wine in a jug and it was rosé. This was a revelation. I'd never been to the south of France at this time and I knew even less about wine than I did about the south of France so I didn't expect that. But it made sense from my first taste. In retrospect I probably didn't think much about rosé again for over ten years and when you have no thoughts on a wine type you probably won't pay any attention to whether you drink it, what you drink and certainly won’t have a clue about it. This is not entirely true, of course, I remember buying a bottle in March 2008, but I have a freakish memory . In the summer of 2012 I started working in a little French wine store called Nicolas and they had some great and not so great Rosé options,but they had lots. By coincidence I developed a taste for it and as the majority were from France, particularly southern France the rekindling of my brief (three day) love affair with Rosé de Provence had taken place. These days we're all a bit older and a bit more sophisticated and Rosé is very popular so I won't patronize you but in case you don't know, here are some facts. 

 Rosé or Rosado as the Spanish call it, is made from black grapes i.e. the wines they make red wine with, apart from a freak pinot grigio from Italy but I won’t be talking about that.

 It goes from Very Pale (as in Provence) to almost red like (e.g. in Spain- in the North where they make very good ones).

 Drink it very cold. (Patronizing, forgive me) PS they have no qualms in France serving it with ice, I like that.

That's all you need to know.

Oh and the colour. Well, the colour comes from the skins. Grape juice is clear, so the colour of your wine is determined by the amount of skin contact. Easy eh!

Now that takes me back to Rosé de Provence. Nothing represents summer more than it, in wine terms at least, to my mind. That delicate pale hue, that freshness, those reds fruits on the nose, the minerality and so on transports you to the south of France. This is perhaps the reason why I didn't buy a bottle this year till this weekend as summer has taken its time.  To my shock it was rather hard to find in Muswell Hill. There was rose from everywhere, Chile, California, Australia, Bordeaux (who drinks Rose from Bordeaux? Clearly the Marks and Spencer Wine buyer didn't ask this question as shelves were full of it-though it is actually very good-it’s called Amelie, but it’s a hard sell) but not Provence. If you like Rosé and buy it then try one from Provence. It is the benchmark for the best Rosé can be. A perfect summer aperitif yet complex and food friendly. You may have to pay ten quid to get a decent one and even more to get an exceptional one but it's worth it once in a while. I suspect the reputation of Rosé in Britain at least is still partly influenced by Matthias Rosé, enjoyed by footballers in the 1970's and lots of other people on the 1980's. Wine knowledge like lots of other things in life is passed down to us by those with more life experience but not necessarily more knowledge. Rosé is perhaps still too often seen as a merely functional wine, something you drink the minute hints of summer appear and not seen as the most sophisticated vino out there and fair play, wine should not be taken too seriously. If you fancy some and there's none on the menu, it's not life and death but do yourselves a favour and buy one bottle of Provence Rosé whilst summer and blue skies remain and you might just be converted unless you already are of course in which case, I'm just preaching.

PS I don't even know what Blush is, I think it's from California.