I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: good value is not the same as cheap. In fact, the French have the perfect description for it: qualité/prix, meaning good quality for the price. That applies to rosé as much as it does to any other colour of wine, if not even more so. There are under-£5 reds and whites out there that are really outstanding bargains (Tesco’s 2022 Vista Castelli Trebbiano d’Abruzzo at £4.25 being a case in point), but I’m hard pushed to think of any sub-£5 rosé that rocks my boat. That’s rare even under £7, although Aldi, as ever, manages to achieve it (see today’s pick).
Cheap rosés tend to taste confected, bubble-gummy and often too sweet, both for my tastes and, it seems, the market generally: Californian rosé sales are down 20% over the past year, a Tesco spokesperson tells me, while French rosé is up 7%, which suggests that people now prefer the fashionably pale dry style of rosé they make in Provence.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t tend to be cheap, especially if it comes in a fancy bottle. Winemakers in Provence, led by Château d’Esclans’ Whispering Angel, have been brilliant at building demand for their intensely Instagrammable products, in much the same way as Cloudy Bay in New Zealand persuaded us all to pay over the odds for its sauvignon blanc back in the 1990s. Sure, the wines are good, but you can get bottles of an equivalent quality at a cheaper price from elsewhere, and notably from other parts of southern France. Even supermarket own-label Provence rosé doesn’t tick the box in quite the same way as some of the better Languedoc rosés such as Gérard Bertrand’s and the Château La Négly in my pick this week.
That said, if you’re looking for a sub-£10 rosé, Morrisons’ The Best Côtes de Provence Rosé 2021 (13%) is a decent buy at its current offer price of £8.50, plus, as a 2021 vintage, it has had time to settle down as many of the 2022s haven’t. Interestingly, Tesco’s French wine buyer, Charlotte Lemoine, informs me that they bottle the Finest Côtes de Provence Rosé (currently £8 to Clubcard members, 12.5%) every three months to maintain freshness: “We have a fresher blend in summer, when we want zippier notes. In winter, it’s more creamy.”
Rosé is now popular year round, according to both Lemoine and the Co-op’s French buyer, Ben Cahill. “Rosé outperformed both red and white in terms of growth last Christmas,” Cahill reveals. “We’d have been accused of lunacy a few years ago for stocking so much at that time of year, but it went like a train.”
Five rosés worth buying
Aldi Specially Selected La Bonne Vie Rosé 2022 £6.99, 12.5%. It’s hard to beat Aldi for value on the cheap rosé stakes. Super-fresh and delicately fruity.
Wairau Cove Rosé 2022 £7.50 Tesco, 12.5%. Softer, fruitier style with a hint of freshly picked raspberries.
Gérard Bertrand Côte des Roses 2022 £11 Ocado, Tesco, 13%. Pretty bottle, very crisp, bright and citrussy – a good £5 cheaper than it would be if it came from Provence.
Château La Négly La Natice Rosé 2022 £13.75 Co-op, 13%. Another gorgeous, faintly creamy, Provençal-style rosé from Languedoc (and one I buy myself).
Château d’Estoublon Roseblood Rosé 2022 £20.99 (or £17.99 on mix-six) Majestic, £19.99 Selfridges, 12.5%. A really classy rosé with a glitzy back story – it’s part-owned by Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, her husband Nicolas Sarkozy and Jean-Guillaume Prats, ex of of Château Lafite-Rothschild. Could have been a lot more bling and expensive than this. A smarter, less obvious choice than the ubiquitous Whispering Angel.
For more by Fiona Beckett, go to fionabeckett.substack.com
