Types of rosé and quality vary hugely
Tradition has it that we drink hearty reds in winter and cool whites and pinks in summer, but excellent options for winter rosés exist. What better time to offer one than for St Valentines day? A fine glass of this on a sun-drenched Alpine balcony during a pause in a day on the slopes (just one, please!) will give you something special to add to the ski memories.
These wines come in a wide range of pinks, from pale blushes to deep salmon. But rosé is so eminently a summer wine that few people think to drink it in winter – and yet it can be a wonderful winter wine, done right. The bubbly versions and some dry rosés are excellent apéritif wines, the perfect opener to a romantic evening. An oeil de perdrix, one of Switzerland’s treasures, can be beautiful with light meats and many vegetarian dishes.
The trick with rosés is to realize that the range is huge, from very dry to very sweet, and to remember that the quality range is equally large, so choose with some care. Prices start so low you can barely see them, but for really fine Provencal ones CHF100+ is not unusual.
A rosé tasting session for the family makes converts to elegant wines
I organized a small tasting session of pink wines last summer, as part of a family gathering in the UK. The weather was fine, and we had a large spread of excellent self-serve food, with a long stretch of beautiful garden for the children to roam in, so the adults had a bit of peace. The group ranged from those who don’t touch much wine to a couple of us who routinely taste many wines from around the world, to a niece who trained in Montreux at its hotel school: in other words, all tastes and all levels of familiarity with wine.
The goal of the tasting session was simply to raise awareness of how very different these wines can be and to help people reflect a bit on why they prefer some more than others. These are wines you can serve to a mixed group of drinkers, for under CHF20 a bottle.
We sampled five wines, three from small wineries in Switzerland, two from large domains in France.
Everyone liked the first sip of JP Chenet’s Cinsault Grenache rosé from the south of France, but the group quickly realized it was primarily because the wine was well chilled and the day was warm, so the first bit of sweetness pleased, from this mass market wine that France exports to all corners of the world. The second sip was cloying and we quickly moved on to a wine from Founex, Switzerland, from the La Boye domain, one of several small domains in the area regrouped in recent years by producer Les Frères Dutruy. This is a Gamay rosé, from grapes that made their name in Burgundy but which western Switzerland grows particularly well. There is a hint of sparkling to this wine, fruity with a noticeable nose of cherries. Held to the light it is a lovely light pink with an apricot tint. We had a bottle of the 2008, a Terravin gold winner. At CHF10.80 a bottle it’s good value. The general consensus was that this is a very pleasant wine that worked well with our hot and cold buffet food.
For our third wine we went back to a French rosé, Listel’s Domaine de Jarras, Gris de gris, a drinkable version of the Camargue gris de gris wines, which are too often over-sweet and mediocre. Gris de gris, also known as vin gris wines, are similar to American blush wines in appearance, but they are usually drier, suited to European tastes. These are, like most rosés, made from dark-skinned grapes but treated as if they were white wines: little maceration, the part of the winemaking process where where the juice and skins remain in contact, giving the wine colour. For gris de gris wines, the skins are left in contact with the juice for only a very short time before pressing or, in some cases, draining off the juice. Listel is a large family company in the south of France whose wine is easily found outside the country. The winery is a regular stop for people touring the Languedoc-Roussillon region. Those in our family who drink less wine found this an easy wine, while the more experienced wine drinkers felt it was pleasant but had little to offer in the way of nose or palate.
Number four prompted several people to ask if they were allowed to go back and try numbers one to three to compare, because we had suddenly moved to new territory. Les Chaumes oeil de perdrix is a Vaud wine produced by the cantonal cooperative Cidis. The price is good: CHF8.20. The wine is a nicely balanced oeil de perdrix, which is a Swiss specialty: lightly macerated Pinot Noir grapes, which generally have a more interesting nose than the bulk of rosés out there. They boast beautiful colours, so often grace a table with more elegance than pinker rosés, and they are typically dry, which makes them better food companions. This is a lovely wine with grilled meats and roast chicken, for it has a wonderful hint of quince to the nose that complements these foods particularly well. It is made from Pinot Noir grapes grown along the shores of Lake Geneva between Rolle and Lausanne.
And don’t be put off by the idea of a cooperative: Cidis, like Provins in Valais, produces many excellent wines.
Unfortunately, I had not had the foresight to bring along a Neuchatel or a Geneva oeil de perdrix, for these two cantons produce some of the best versions of this wine.
Our first and third wines began to suffer by comparison, although the newcomers to wine remained most comfortable with Listel, which doesn’t hold any surprises.
We reached number five, which I already knew was my favourite of the lot, a wine I think makes an excellent aperitif, so it was rewarding to hear a few oohs and aaahs when we poured a second wine from Les Frères Dutruy, but this time the rosé du Pinot Noir (essentially an oeil de perdrix) from the Domaine de la Treille. This is a smooth, balanced and elegant wine, almost salmon in colour, drier than many but with very pleasant red fruit notes. It is CHF13.50 a bottle, an excellent wine for this price. The 2008 was a finalist in the sélection des Vins Vaudois 2009.
A selection of Lake Geneva region rosés I can recommend (some are currently out of stock, so place orders to try them later). Note that most producers in Switzerland will ship, using the post office, an inexpensive and quick method of buying if you’re unable to visit the winery.
- Le Clos de Celigny, Geneva, CHF11.90 for the Gamay and CHF13.90 for the oeil de perdrix
- Cave Philippe Bovet, a Gamay, Givrins, Vaud, CHF11
- Domaine La Capitaine, a Gamay, Begnins, Vaud, CHF12.90 (bio)
- Domaine de Terre Neuve, a Pinot Noir, Saint-Prex, Vaud, CHF9
- Domaine Constant Jomini, a Pinot Noir, Chexbres, Vaud, CHF12.50