Sex, drugs and Mateus Rosé
Last week we looked at one icon of the ‘60s and ‘70s Blue Nun, now it’s the turn of another. It’s the mighty Mateus Rose
What do Saddam Hussein, Queen Elizabeth II and Jimi Hendrix have in common? No? Can’t guess? They all had a thing for Mateus Rosé. Yes, that wine in the funny shaped bottle. It might be considered passé, but Mateus has a history to rival some of the great wines in the world. Last year the brand celebrated its 80th anniversary.
The story begins in 1942 with one man, Fernando Van Zeller Guedes. “He was a visionary” according to Joao Gomes da Silva from Sogrape, the company Guedes founded, “it was incredible that while the world was at war, he was thinking of conquering the world with wine.” The first target market was Brazil, a country that like Portugal that had stayed out of the second world war.
Mateus was quite unlike anything else available at the time. It was pink, when wine was either red or white. It was also fruity, sweet and gently sparkling, and, importantly, at a time when table wines could be hit-or-miss affairs, the taste was as consistent as a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label. The packaging was unusual too, squat and wide, based on a Portuguese soldier’s water bottle. Finally, the distinctive label featured the Palace of Mateus belonging to the Count of Mangualde who in one of the worst financial decisions in history took a lump sum for the royalties rather than a percentage of each bottle sold.
Brazil fell into an economic slump after the war but the brand prospered globally. In Guedes, Mateus had a tireless salesman. On his travels, he gave two bottles to each Portuguese ambassador, one to drink and one to give to anyone who might help distribute the wine.
Mateus was unleashed on America in 1953 which at the time was not a wine drinking country. Da Silva said: “American wine culture was in its infancy, Prohibition was not so long ago.” To say the American market took to Mateus would be an understatement. Da Silva thinks it caught the spirit of the 1960s: “Mateus was rebellious because it’s rosé and in a different bottle. And you’re different too.” Sex, drugs and Mateus Rosé. Strange but true. Jim Hendrix was photographed with it, a bottle appears on a Graham Nash album cover and Elton John sang “I get juiced on Mateus and just hang loose” on ‘Social Disease’ off Goodbye Yellow Brick.
The bottle became an icon, used as a candle holder in a million college dormitories. In their book Is this bottle Corked: The secret life of wine Michael Bywater and Kathleen Burk state, “Mateus Rosé achieved an almost unheard-of brand recognition.” At its peak, in 1974 America imported over 20 million bottles.
But it wasn’t just the hip young things who were getting into Mateus. Auberon Waugh writes of how his father, the novelist Evelyn Waugh, developed a passion for the stuff: “he came back from Rhodesia one day announcing a new discovery from Portugal called Mateus Rosé, and drank it through one whole summer.” The British Royal family were fans as was the dictator of Iraq, Sadaam Hussein.
According to Jancis Robinson’s Oxford Wine Companion: “in 1978, Mateus accounted for 40% of Portugal’s wine exports with worldwide sales amounting to 3.5 million cases [42 million bottles].” That’s a Whole lotta rosé.
From such heights, there was only one way the brand could go. By the ‘80s, America was becoming a wine drinking country and tastes had changed. Big oaky dry wines like Californian chardonnay and cabernet were all the rage. Then problems with Sogrape’s US distributor in the early ‘80s meant that Mateus almost disappeared from the US market. By the time it returned, Mateus was what your parents drank. It was no longer cool.
Yet Mateus is still massive globally selling around 20 million bottles a year. Da Silva said that Australia and Switzerland have enjoyed double digit growth in 2020. Andy why not? It’s a quality product made with native Portuguese grapes. San Francisco-based wine writer W Blake Grey wrote of his Mateus awakening: “Because Mateus Rosé is not just cheap, ladies and gentleman. I say this knowing that the Kool Kids Wine Kritiks will never share their orange wines with me, but .... Mateus Rosé is pretty good.” I remember drinking it ice cold in a boat during the annual rabelo race between port houses up the Douro, I was a guest of Sogrape, and like Grey I rather liked it.
Mateus Rosé has now been reformulated for the US market to make it drier. It was relaunched in 2021 and Da Silva said, “I’ve never seen distributors react with such excitement.” Rosé is currently the drink du jour, so it’s fitting that the original is back. It might not knock Provence off the top of the rose tree but if you want to drink like a ‘70s rock star, put some Elton John on the hifi and pull out a bottle of Mateus.