A recent phenomenon has been the global discovery of Rose from Provence. Considering our climate and the natural use of the outdoors for entertaining why has Rose taken so long to catch on.
There I have said it, Rose sits in ‘no mans land’, nothing more than a picnic wine with a colour associated with dolls. Yes it’s the colour and sweetness of the 1970s that says the wine was not serious, a friend of sun-light and sand, a wine with no purpose. Now we have begun to accept Rose as a serious wine we may ask, what does it offer apart from the change in colour. Or to put this another way, what do we want the wine to express.
Enter the Barossa Valley where we know the white varieties develop more flavour than those grown in cooler climates where they said to express more finesse and delicacy. Well the difference in climate expresses flavours differently but which is better? So what happens if we gently press Grenache and Mataro and bleed off the free run juice with minimal colour, to make our Rose. Pale tint of red going tawny at the edge of the glass, and we get to see what the grape flavours are without tannins and oak maturation.
Such wines have a great future and from the 1970s I have known Rose from warm climates-districts are the best.
