A rose still smells and tastes sweet

The last of the summer rose was enjoyed over recent days as the warmth finally slipped from our grasp. Those annual row s about how early the heating should be put on have started already in our house.

There’s no doubt the nights have become chilly and mornings seem to take longer to recover from those single-digit temperatures.

Well, it is October now in fairness so getting this far and still enjoying that chilled strawberr y tartlet f lavour is quite something.

Dare we sip from that glass of sunshine j ust one more time before the evening meal demand s something more sturdy? I say do it.

Dare to dream of outdoor evenings? Well it’ll be easier after a few glasses, but still wear a hoody and don’t stand outdoors for any longer than five minutes.

A heftier rose, or I should say rosado, I had a few glasses of last week was from the massive Rioja producer Marques de Caceres.

The 96% Tempranillo with a splash of Garnacha Tinta blend was the red summer f r ui t pudding loveliness you’d expect.

But it had enough of that slightly grippy, spikey, wellrounded mouthfeel to do well with food.

Tempranillo is a fairly tannic grape, and this particular rose is kept for a month on its lees, where I’m guessing it picks up more body and complexity.

In the past few years there’s been a push to create more

complex, food-friendly rose with the use of older vines, more effort during fermentation and some oak ageing.

With the added weight, t h e re’s n o reason you shouldn’t keep drinking rose e ven aft er y ou f i nal ly succumb to sticking the heating on in the evenings.

It’s not j ust an aperitif anymore.

If y ou drink a white in the winter months, why wouldn’t you go for a rosw?

I ’ve still a slight mental block where I find it a l most impossible to part with more than a just £6 in Sainsbury’s at the minute.

If you want to splash a couple of quid extra, top-class producer The Ned does a Pinot Noir rose which is pretty special. Around £11 at indies like Vineyard.

tenner for a rose yet I’d happily do that for a white. A more Provence style rose I had was a Chiaretto (key-aretto) which only became its own DOC, close to Lake Garda in Italy i n 2018.

T h e name derives from the Italian Chiaro which means light or pale. That seems appropriate as recently they have adopted a light-touch approach to extracting colour from the Corvina grapes you get in serious reds. It may be October, but everything’s still rose.

Getting this far & still enjoying that strawberry tartlet flavour is quite something