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Rose has a strange life in Britain. It arrives in a rush around the first warm weekend of May, gets treated as an interchangeable pink commodity for three months, and is quietly abandoned the moment the evenings draw in. Late August is precisely the wrong time to give up on it. The food is better, the weather is more forgiving, and the wines that suit this part of the year are more interesting than the pale, whisper-light bottles that dominate high summer.
Choosing the best rose wine for summer drinking is mostly a question of matching style to circumstance, and there are far more styles than the shelf layout suggests. Here is how the main ones actually differ, and what to do with them.
Provence set the template for modern rose: pale onion skin or barely-there salmon, dry, low in obvious fruit, built around delicacy and a saline finish. At its best it is genuinely accomplished wine, refreshing without being simple, and it works beautifully as an aperitif before anyone has thought about food.
The problem is that pallor became a marketing shortcut. A great many producers now bleach the colour out of ordinary wine to make it look expensive, and the results are thin and forgettable. Colour in rose comes from skin contact time and grape variety, not from quality, so treat pale as a stylistic signal rather than a promise. Grenache-led blends with a little Cinsault and Syrah tend to give the most satisfying results. If a Provence rose smells of almost nothing in the glass, it will taste of almost nothing too, however chic the bottle.
These two southern French appellations make the roses worth reaching for in late summer, when you want something that can stand up to grilled food and a slight chill in the air.
Tavel, from the southern Rhone, is deliberately deep in colour, made from Grenache with Cinsault and Clairette, and has real weight without any sweetness. It handles lamb, charcuterie, anything charred and anything with garlic in it. Serve it a touch warmer than you would a pale rose, around 11 degrees, and it behaves almost like a very light red.
Bandol rose, built on Mourvedre, is the more serious proposition. It has a savoury, slightly herbal, faintly smoky character and a texture you can chew on. It also ages, which almost no other rose does convincingly. A three or four year old Bandol will taste more complex than the current vintage, not less.
Spanish rosado, particularly from Navarra and Rioja, is one of the great value categories in wine. Garnacha rosado gives strawberry and blood orange fruit with plenty of body, and prices remain sensible because the style has never been fashionable in the way Provence has. It is an excellent choice for a large gathering where you want the wine to be good rather than merely correct.
Italy offers rosato from Puglia, Abruzzo and Sicily with darker cherry fruit and a bitter almond twist on the finish that makes it unusually food-friendly. Cerasuolo d Abruzzo, made from Montepulciano, is worth seeking out and pairs remarkably well with tomato-based dishes that defeat most white wines.
English rose has improved dramatically, and sparkling English rose in particular has become a genuine alternative to pink Champagne, with sharper acidity and red fruit that reads as redcurrant rather than strawberry. You will find both still and sparkling styles alongside the rest of the wine range.
Two methods dominate. Direct press treats red grapes almost like white ones, crushing and pressing quickly so the juice picks up only a little colour. This gives the pale, delicate, aromatic style associated with Provence.
The saignee method bleeds off a portion of juice from a vat of red wine after a few hours of skin contact. The rose is a by-product of concentrating the red, and it tends to be darker, fruitier and fuller. Neither method is better, but knowing which you are drinking explains a great deal about what is in the glass. A wine that tastes surprisingly substantial for a rose has usually had more skin contact, whatever the label says about elegance.
Most rose in Britain is drunk far too cold. At 4 degrees straight from the fridge, aroma is suppressed and everything tastes of cold acidity. Fifteen minutes on the worktop before pouring transforms an average bottle. Aim for 8 to 10 degrees for pale styles and 10 to 12 for Tavel, Bandol and darker rosados.
Use a proper white wine glass rather than a tumbler or a small flute. Rose needs air and a bowl to develop aroma, and it is one of the wines most obviously improved by decent glassware. Once opened, a rose keeps two or three days in the fridge with a stopper, though the aromatics fade first, so drink the good stuff on the night.
Buy the current vintage unless you are deliberately after an aged Bandol, and avoid any bottle that has been sitting in direct sunlight. Rose is the most light-sensitive wine on the shelf, and clear glass offers it no protection at all.
This is where late summer rose earns its keep. Pale Provence styles work with cold seafood, goat cheese, salads with plenty of herbs and anything involving tomatoes and olive oil. Spanish rosado handles paella, chorizo and grilled peppers. Tavel and Bandol take on the barbecue directly, including lamb, merguez and aubergine cooked until it is properly blackened.
The one thing rose struggles with is heavy cream and butter, which flatten its acidity. Otherwise it is the most versatile category on any table, which is exactly why it deserves to survive past the end of the school holidays.
If tonight calls for a bottle you have not tried, we deliver across London inside the M25 in 30 to 45 minutes, 24 hours a day, including reds, champagne and chilled rose ready to pour. Have a look at the areas we cover and let the bottle sit out for a quarter of an hour before you open it.
Please drink responsibly. Drinks House 247 operates a Challenge 21 policy - you must be 18 or over to order, and our drivers will ask for photo ID if you look under 21.
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