LA VIE EN ROSÉ

In his first monthly column for Prestige Hong Kong, Japan-based wine expert NED GOODWIN MW writes about life in the pink

“SO WHAT WILL YOU DRINK?” my head sommelier asked, as I announced my resignation from Veritas, a Manhattan restaurant with one of the world’s finest wine lists. I had worked as a sommelier in New York for what felt like an eternity. I was worn out by the peripatetic nature of wandering from wine tastings to work, before venturing to some late-night gathering at somebody else’s restaurant for more wine. I yearned for a style of wine that spoke of a less harried life. I craved something refreshing and viscerally satisfying; a wine that could give me eminent pleasure as an aperitif, but could also be married with a wide range of foods. I knew what I wanted. “I will drink rosé and lots of it,” I replied.

I left New York and rented a house in the foothills of the Cévennes, in France’s Languedoc region. Four-and-a-half months in the d’Oc, as the region is colloquially known, saw an average of about three bottles of rosé a day between my friends and I. From our terrace we glimpsed gnarled old Grenache, Carignan and Cinsault vines, fighting against the invasion of international grapes from elsewhere. These were the grapes in our glasses that we were enjoying – stolid and traditional perhaps, yet responsible for the delicious watermelon, tangerine and musk-scented wines, streaked with herbal notes.

Southern French rosé is largely mid-weighted and viscously textured by the warmth of the sun. It is inimitably Mediterranean and its quality variable, though largely decent and at times transcendental, like swimming in the Mediterranean for the first time. Perhaps the pick of the bunch are the rosés from Bandol, an attractively raffish Provençal seaside town, 30 kilometres or so from Marseilles. Here, Domaine Tempier and Château de Pibarnon make fantastic examples from the region’s vineyards, spread like an amphitheatre to absorb every ray of sunshine. This is just as well, as the region’s principal grape variety is Mourvèdre, a notoriously late ripener.

Rosé’s visage becomes more prominent as one heads toward the Côte d’Azur, where it flows across the beaches and bays of Saint Tropez and Antibes, as the jet-set drink it like water, from straws out of magnums. Farther south, throughout Spain, rosé is similarly ubiquitous and a drink of revelry. In Italy, its cultural imprint is limited to select regions in the South. Elsewhere, there are well-crafted examples throughout the United States, where it has become a fetish of the “Rhône Ranger” school, as well as in Australia, where it is made from southern French-inspired blends of Shiraz, Grenache and Mourvèdre in warmer regions; and from Pinot Noir, in cooler zones. For example, Farr Rising, in Geelong, Australia, makes a sumptuous wine using the saignée technique. In other words, a portion of the fermenting must is “bled” from a tank designated for red wine production. In doing so, the red wine is concentrated and a rosé, with minimal skin contact to ensure its delicate complexion, is made.

Elsewhere in France there is a strong rosé culture in the Loire Valley. Here, rosé can be made from an array of grape varieties including Cabernet Franc, Pinot Noir and more unusual indigenous varieties such as Grolleau. Given the cooler climate, these wines are often more chiselled and precise than those from sunnier regions. The pick of Loire rosé – and quite possibly the finest rosé on Earth – is François Côtat’s sublime Sancerre Rosé, from a freezing site on calcareous soils. This is made from gently extracted Pinot Noir grapes. It smells of freshly picked strawberries and boasts a long, minerally finish that belies the casual connotations of the style.

Clearly, rosé’s starring role is that of an avatar, a style of wine that is able to communicate the joys of life like no other. This message is attractive for many wine consumers around the world, attested to by the inexorable rise in rosé consumption over the last decade, especially in New World markets. In Australia, the United Kingdom and United States, for example, rosé has become a style of wine to enjoy on its own or with food. Rosé has become increasingly popular and even hip in pubs, wine-bars and the home.

Paradoxically, drinking rosé has come to define a certain maturity among wine drinkers. This is because it takes a visceral understanding of wine, in a way, to appreciate the pithy freshness of a good glass of rosé. While confected, sweet and cloying expressions of rosé such as Rosé d’Anjou and White Zinfandel still exist at low-price points, most rosé is dry and designed to slake the thirst. Rosé is not a wine to brood over like Bordeaux. It is not about critics’ scores, or for cellaring. Nor is it a wine that brings with it the baggage of anticipation and hankering for complexity, like Burgundy.

Rosé is – when good – simply a delicious drink that does not demand too much thought. Rosé is all about relishing the immediacy of now, be it with spicy or Mediterranean cuisine, Japanese izakaya fare, or simply on its own.