Perfectly balanced to land right in the pink

I’m not averse to pink stuff just a touch off-dry

There are some quite hideous pink wines. I can understand why a lot of people, happy to take a chance with virtually any white or red, treat rosé circumspectly. The trouble is that it’s really difficult to offer cast iron advice.

I could say that French rosés are dry and that would be true, but only up to a point. What about rosé d’Anjou? Most examples are about as dry the Bog of Allen. Yes, pink wines from Provence are dry, some as dry as the Mojave desert, but nip over to the southern Rhône and a little sweetness can creep in. But not in Lirac.

See what I mean? With the New World, it’s easier, but not much. Anything that calls itself Blush Zinfandel will be positively sticky (and often pretty low in acidity, so pretty bleurgh). In Australia and New Zealand the average rosé will be relatively dry but there are some sugary ones just to confuse us.

Sweetness depends on residual sugar left after fermentation. Most Provence rosés weigh in under 2g per litre. A blush Zinfandel can be over 20g per litre.

Sweet rosés make me run a mile. It may be my early brushes with Mateus Rosé, the wine du jour for novices in my childhood (I would be allowed a sip and I had a very sweet tooth aged 12). I can’t remember what wine writer wrote of Mateus Rosé: “I don’t know what it tastes of, but it’s not wine.” However, while I like very dry rosés in that they can behave like fruity whites, I’m not averse to pink stuff that is just a touch off-dry, not so much as to taste sweet but just enough to enhance the fruitiness and its ability to tackle spicy dishes.

When I was starting out on this wine writing lark in the 1980s, rosés were few and far between. Sure, Mateus Rosé was hanging on (the Prosecco of its day in a sense) and rosé d’Anjou in Chinese restaurants, but little else. One exception was Tavel, from the Rhône, very dry, quite alcoholic and remarkably expensive. I don’t think I’ve seen it since.

Now, the pinks of the present...