In France, rosé is the new white — and red

With luck, the trend will hit here — and we’ll get a better year-long selection

This time of year, the LCBO starts its rosé wine program. During fall and winter, its range of rosés is depressingly small because, I suppose, LCBO buyers think there’s not much demand for rosés outside spring and summer. Sales probably suggest that — as they will if you offer only a few (and mostly not very exciting) rosés for half of the year.

In France, rosé wine now makes up more than 30 per cent of wine consumed. That’s up from 10 per cent in the last 25 years, and rosé wine is now twice as popular as white wine there. To be drinking that much rosé, the French must be drinking it year-round. I always knew the French were smart when it comes to wine, and this proves it!

I’m a big fan of rosés, and you should be, too. First, there’s a very good range of styles. Some rosés deliver concentrated flavours and fruitiness, others have more structure. Some are delicate and light-bodied, others carry a lot more weight. There are astringently dry rosés, rosés with some sweet fruitiness, and others with distinct sweetness.

As for colour (important with rosés, as the use of clear-glass bottles shows), they range from almost red, through electric pink and bronze, to that delicate colour known as “partridge eye.” (It’s one of those useless wine terms that supposes we’ve got close enough to a partridge to check out the colour of its eyes.)

And winemakers are making better rosés today than ever before. Rosé wine has long been made in Provence, in southeast France. But in most of the rest of the world, rosé was a niche wine, made more or less sweet and aimed at women drinkers who (it was assumed) liked their wine pink and sugary. Rosé wines were often made from red wine grapes that didn’t make the grade because, after all, rosé wasn’t serious wine.

The new generation of rosé wines are not failed reds, but generally sourced from vines cultivated specifically to produce rosé. They’re made in drier styles (which is not to dis sweeter rosés), and — like red and white wines — they are labelled by variety; rosé wine is less and less often just “rosé wine,” but made from Grenache, pinot noir, Merlot, and so on. In other words, rosé is now the equal of white and red, not an afterthought.

Rosés tend to be lower in alcohol than many other wines, and they’re often in a crisp style that’s great with food. I wish I saw more of them on restaurant wine lists. Add them to your table yearround, to give the LCBO a reason to stock them year-round.