Ah, fine rosé, shall I drink thee on a summer’s day?

Ah, fine rosé, shall I drink thee on a summer’s day?Queries about sweetness are common when a rosé is the suggested wine of choice.

To this day, when asked to name a rosé, many people will still say Mateus as their first response even if they have never tried the wine.

This is likely where the common impression of rosé being sweet stemmed.

During the 1960s and ‘70s, Mateus rosé was one of the biggest selling wines in the world reaching its peak of about 3.5 million cases a year and making up 40 per cent of Portugal’s wine exports.

In Australia, table wine still only made up a minority of production and consumption, with sweeter fortified styles dominating the market. Thus for many wine drinkers, a sweet, lighter chilled wine like Mateus filled a gap in the transition from big, heavy, sweet alcoholic fortified wines to lighter, somewhat drier, less alcoholic table wines.

Unfortunately, the stigma around rosé still exists despite the massive development and sophistication that our food and wine culture has taken in 30 or 40 years since.

Fine rosé is a versatile wine, particularly as we move into another hot summer. Where red wines may be a little too heavy for hot days, rosé provides the flavour profile and complexity of red wines, with the refreshing acidity and clean dry finish of white wines. They can be matched with light salads and richer salads alike with their brisk acidity cutting through any richer dressings. Often they have just enough tannin to match with lighter meats and most fish dishes; or simply chilled a little and enjoyed through the hot afternoons and warm balmy evenings.

Rosé firmly sits between white and red wine. As the grapes are picked, they will often be crushed and the juice left to macerate on the skins for a short period of time, just long enough to extract enough colour to give the juice a pink tinge and a small amount of subtle tannin.

From here it is then fermented as a white wine would be at cool temperatures to retain the bright, fresh fruit characters. This is known as the saignée method as the winemaker is bleeding off this juice to help in concentrating the resultant wine from the remaining juice. The other common method is to press the whole bunches of red grapes soon after picking to limit the amount of colour and tannin to be extracted from the skins. The juice is then fermented without any skin contact, resulting in a much lighter, paler coloured rosé, sometimes referred to as the direct press method.

The best rosés will have the depth, complexity, balance and persistence of any great white or red wine, while firmly sitting between the two in style. Their weight and feel more on the white wine side of the ledger with a refreshing line of acidity, while presenting clean, bright red wine fruit characteristics typical of the respective grape variety used.

Guiessard Le Petit G Rosé – $18.99
The predigree of this producer is hard to beat. Winemaker Clement Minne was formerly winemaker at the iconic Domaine Tempier (more than once proclaimed the best rosé in the world) before establishing Gueissard in 2010. Still based in Bandol, they source fruit from across Provence for this wine. Grenache, Syrah and Cinsault make up the blend. Light, dry and crisp with plenty of subtle red berry fruits, subtle salinity and a presence that set it apart in a recent line up of 10 different roses.