Everything’s rosé (and pale red)
Phew, what a scorcher!
Summer is here. And how! With temperatures heading towards 100 degrees Fahrenheit in London this week, just like saucy French film 37°2 le matin, I’m republishing something I wrote earlier this year for the Spectator on the great pink takeover. Plus I’ve included summer reds and rosés recommendations for paid subscribers including the best value pink on the high street.
Later this week, I’m planning something on drinks in P.G. Wodehouse inspired by this wonderful episode of ‘The Book Club’ on The Code of the Woosters.
Notes on rosé
Alan Watkins, the late parliamentary sketchwriter, told a story about his time on the Sunday Express in the 1960s. He was called into the office of his editor, Sir John Junor, thinking he was going to get a telling off for spending too much on expenses. Instead, Junor brought out a receipt from El Vino and said “only poofs drink rosé”.
How far we have come from those Neanderthal days! It’s not just Britain’s vibrant homosexual community who are knocking back the pink, so to speak. Everyone’s at it. Jeremy Clarkson’s drink of choice isn’t beer, it’s rosé. As a nation we get through well over 100 million bottles each year.
Far from being something revolutionary, however, the British have enjoyed rosé for centuries. In the past, many wines would have been pink by default as all the grapes, red or white, ripe or not, would be thrown in together. The colour was known as l’oeil de perdrix (partridge eye).
The Bordeaux that the English happily guzzled for centuries when the city was part of England would have been closer to a rosé than the deep-coloured wines of today. ‘Claret’ comes from the French ‘clairet’ meaning a pale-coloured red. You can still buy such wines - they’re like a cross between a red and a rosé. During the 14th century, something like the equivalent of 50 million bottles would be shipped from Bordeaux to England every year at a time when the population was around five million. That’s a whole lotta rosé.
Such wines were superseded by proper reds from the 17th century onwards, but pinks continued to be made. Until recently they would have been much darker than they are today. They were often by-products of red wine production where some of the juice was drawn off early in the fermentation process to concentrate the remainder, a technique process known as saignée. But in the 1980s rosé went high tech.
According to rosé expert Elizabeth Gabay, the pioneer was Régine Sumeire of Château la Tour de l’Évêque, who bought a modern pneumatic press which allowed her to press the juice but very little colour out of black grapes. The prototype for yacht rosé was born. The style took a while to catch on. Looking at the Provence episode of 1998 series ‘Floyd Uncorked’, Keith Floyd is cheerfully sampling a reddish pink wine. From there, however, the wines became paler and paler in Provence, and by 2010 it had pushed out deeper-coloured native styles in Spain and Italy like the grey squirrel of wine.
An arms race developed to create the palest pink imaginable. Some are essentially white wines made from black grapes. Then the celebs piled in. Nowadays you’re no one if you don’t have your own rosé brand like Carla Bruni, Jon Bon Jovi, Kylie, Meghan Markle and most recently Queen, the band not the late monarch, which has just released its very own Côtes de Provence.
I’m not going to be sniffy. Celeb rosé makes a lot of sense because the differences between various bottles are often tiny, so the personality of the star in question is all important. I’ll happily enjoy a Hampton Water (Bon Jovi) or Roseblood (Bruni) on a hot summer’s day, especially with some ice in. Yes, you are allowed to do this.
But there are rosés out there for people who like a bit more flavour; wines from Tavel in the Rhône valley or Abruzzo in Southern Italy. My own current favourite is Dear Noodles, a pinot noir-based pink from Sussex made by an Irishman, Dermot Sugrue and named after his late dog. Even the crustiest newspaper editor would appreciate its sturdy charms.
And now for pinks and pale reds for paid subscribers and none over £20…
