To be perfectly clear, I love rosé. On a hot summer’s day it’s all you want; on a cool drizzly summer’s day it reminds you that it is in fact still summer. But you know all that.
What I wonder about – and shoot me down by all means – is why there is no rosé of a level equivalent to that of, say, Latour. Or a Grand Cru Burgundy. Or a top-flight Austrian or German Riesling.
And then I have to wonder what I mean by that. Capable of ageing for 50 years? Or 20, anyway? I suspect that long ageing is only one element of greatness, so I’d be prepared to waive that. By ‘great’ I mean something compelling, resonant, memorable, complex.
And wondering that, as I was, I chucked the idea at a few people to see what they would say. Some of them made suggestions, and if I could I tasted them. One of the suggestions was from Provence, but oddly enough the ultra-hyped names did not appear in anyone’s suggestions.
But more of that later. The thing is, do we actually want rosé to be as good as Latour, or a Grosses Gewächs Riesling, or whatever? It would mean yet another wine we have to be serious about, and it’s really rather nice to have lots of wine identified primarily by its colour, about which we do not have to be particularly serious.
Rosé has been struggling for some years now to be seen as
