Alan Watkins, the late parliamentary sketch writer, 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 be told 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 gay community knocking back the pink. Everyone’s at it. Jeremy Clarkson’s drink of choice isn’t beer, it’s rosé. As a nation we get through more than 100 million bottles each year.
In fact, the British have enjoyed rosé for centuries. In the past, many wines would have been pink by default as all the grapes would be thrown in together. The colour was known as l’oeil de perdrix (partridge eye).
Bordeaux 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 were shipped from Bordeaux to England every year at a time when the country’s population was only around five million.
Such wines were superseded by proper reds in the 17th century but pinks continued to be made.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 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: Kylie Minogue, Carla Bruni, Jon Bon Jovi, Meghan Markle and, most recently, the band Queen, which has just released its Queen Côtes de Provence Rosé.
Celeb rosé makes 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.
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 current favourite is Dear Noodles, a pinot noir-based pink from Sussex made by Irishman Dermot Sugrue and named after his late dog. Even the crustiest newspaper editor would appreciate its sturdy charms.
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