Tickled Pink Rosé continues to be the most refreshing summer wine.

Everything’s coming up rosé for great Australian wines in this food-friendly style, writes

The pale, dry, textural wines that are currently dominating the rosé market are light years away from the highly coloured, sweet and fruity styles we used to see in this category.

This recent shift has been quite dramatic, though welcome. It was led, one suspects, by the affordable imports that flooded our shores a few years back, when the Australian dollar was sky-high. In that sea of wine was rosé from Provence. Food-friendly French rosé was a style that Australian winemakers had loved for years, so it didn’t take long for local wineries to create their own Provence-inspired drops.

At first, many of the new-style pale rosés were so restrained that they lacked personality and flavour.

However, winemakers were quick to refine their techniques and experiment with different varieties and blends. The select use of old-oak fermentation and lees ageing have resulted in wines with excellent weight and character. The best of these have a faint, almost intangible savouriness that will have you coming back for another glass.

A superb example is the slick Yalumba Block 2 Grenache Rosé, $40, produced from vines that have an age range of 40–68 years. Hand-picked grenache grapes are crushed and spend just two hours on skins to create the blush-pink hue. This juice goes straight into barrels for fermentation with indigenous yeasts, then spends six months ageing in the presence of the lees. The result is a wine with impressive palate breadth, plus a mix of mild fruit, measured acidity and pleasing restraint. It’s produced in small quantities and may be hard to find, so order direct from the winery.

Also excellent is the 2017 Marchand & Burch Villages Rosé, $26, produced from shiraz and pinot noir. It has gorgeous fresh-cream aromas with nuances of lemon and star fruit.