Rock band Queen – or what’s left of it – has just launched its maiden wine: the 2025 Queen Côtes de Provence Rosé. Yet another ‘celebrity’ vino being crammed into an already crowded market you might say. Well, yes, you’re right. But it does come in a rather chic bottle that wouldn’t disgrace your dining table and the wine itself has been lapped up by the critics.
It scored an impressive 95 points out of 100 at a blind tasting of rosés at the recent International Wine Challenge and was awarded the Provence Rosé Trophy, the only still rosé to win a trophy at this year’s event.
I’ve tried it a couple of times and, well, I much enjoyed it. Fresh, weighty, creamy and full of herbs and wild strawberry fruit, it’s way better than most ‘sleb’-endorsed slop, and it’s yours for just £18 a pop.
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But if the celebrity wine market is crowded, what about the rosé one? Do we need yet another pale, pale pink Provençal rosé fighting for space on the shelves and in our fridges? Aren’t there – yawn – already enough? It seems not. The rosé revolution continues and, if my home town of Brighton is anything to go by, summer Sunday lunches, beach barbecues, hen parties and the like are fuelled almost exclusively by PPPPR, known disparagingly hereabouts as ‘lady petrol’.
Some truly desperate folk fill up instead on dread Blossom Hill White (actually pink) Zinfandel for £5.95 a bottle or Yellow Tail Jammy Rosé Roo for £8.25. But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Readers of Spear’s should be reassured, though, that there’s another world beyond such pink candyfloss and that there are other treats to be had; wines for savouring on the superyacht rather than for glugging by the pool, wines that taste of wine, wines that go with food, and wines that you won’t forget the minute you knock them back.
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Fine rosé is versatile and adaptable. Drink it as an aperitif. Drink it with fish or drink it with red meat. Rosé is, after all, a red wine that’s just spent a very short time on its skins.
You will have heard of Whispering Angel, of course, beloved of many and derided by others as nothing better than canny marketing. Well, it’s a fine rosé whatever you say, if somewhat overpriced for what it is. It’s one up from entry level The Palm, in the range of Ch. d’Esclans, the Provençal estate of Sacha Lichine, known as Le Roi de Rosé. Above it, sit Rock Angel, Les Clans and fabled Garrus, the current – 2023 – vintage of which will set you back around £100 a bottle at Majestic.
It’s a great wine, Garrus, made from 100-year-old, single vineyard Grenache and Rolle (aka Vermentino). Lichine and his late partner – Patrick Léon, former head winemaker at Ch. Mouton-Rothschild – set out to make the finest rosé in the world and with Garrus they might well have succeeded.
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Oak-fermented and oak-aged, Garrus is a wine designed to age and to be enjoyed with food. It’s a proper, grown-up wine.
And there are others. How about Gérard Bertrand’s Clos de Temple from the Languedoc? A biodynamically produced rosé blended from Cinsault, Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre and Viognier, it too is often described as the finest rosé in the world. It’s certainly one of the priciest, with the current 2023 vintage retailing at £210 a bottle from the winery.
And don’t forget the 2012 Viña Tondonia Rosado Gran Reserva from Bodegas R. Lopez de Heredia in Haro, Rioja. An extraordinary wine made from Grenache, Tempranillo and Viura aged for four years in oak, it’s yours for £200 a bottle at Hedonism.
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If you have the do-re-mi, you shouldn’t baulk at buying such wines. They are firstclass fare made by first-class winemakers. Why, if you’re happy to spend, say, £150-£200 a bottle on 2019 Ch. Pichon-Baron or 2023 Domaine Dujac Puligny Montrachet Les Folatières or 2012 Bollinger Grande Année Rosé, would you skimp on the rosé?
In this instance – just because you can, you jolly well should.
This article first appeared in Spear’s Magazine Issue 100. Click here to subscribe
