pastel-shaded rivals

product. Most important of all, perhaps, the region has been the site of unprecedented investment and specialisation in the style in recent years, leading to the kind of fine-detail tweaks to sorting, pressing and maceration that might seem pedantic, fussy and microscopic, but which are essential in a style in which subtlety of expression is the defining feature.

To me the situation with pale rosé resembles the world of traditional-method sparkling wine at the beginning of this century. At that point, Champagne was unchallenged as the market leader, and operating in a completely different league at the top end. The years since, however, have seen a wave of genuine competitors emerge in regions that have made sparkling wine a speciality, from southern England to Tasmania. All of which means that, while it’s still hard to look past top Champagne when assessing the world’s best sparkling wines, the gap between the rest of Champagne and the best of the rest of sparkling wine has narrowed to the point of invisibility. At the same time, enhanced competition has improved the basic level of Champagne.

At current rates of improvement, a similar narrowing will happen in pale rosé over the next five years – a situation which won’t do anything to please the sceptics, but will be good news for the style’s evergrowing number of fans.

Broadening the pink palate

Wherever you stand on Provence and the spread of pale pink, there is always an alternative. While pale takes an evergreater share of the total rosé market (a study by market research firm Agrex Consultancy for the Provence generic body the CIVP suggested that it has swapped places with darker styles, going from around 30% of rosé production to around 70% in the past decade) that market has itself grown enormously. Global consumption of rosé is up by around a quarter since 2002, according to the CIVP. That leaves plenty of room in the market for different and often innovative approaches.

At just shy of 30% of the total, France is comfortably the world’s biggest roséproducing country, and many French pink producers have profited as

Focus On Ros

From page 49 drinkers brought into the rosé category by Provence look for something a little different. One beneficiary is Sancerre, where rosé production now outstrips red, accounting for 7.4% of the total (red has 6%). The Sancerre style, slightly racier than its southern counterpart but a logical next step for those weaned in the Provence way, has proved hugely influential wherever Pinot Noir is grown, with increasingly worthwhile examples from New Zealand, Germany and Switzerland.

Bordeaux, which was rather slow to embrace the rosé boom, has also been increasingly focused on its pink wines: a necessary adjustment in a country where more rosé is consumed than white. Rosé has grown to account for some 4,310ha, or 5.8%, of the Bordeaux vineyard (up from 4% in 2016). And while much of the growth has been in lighter styles, the region’s original darker rosé style, clairet, has also been enjoying a revival, fitting, like the Rhône’s Tavel, into that currently fashionable grey area where rosé meets lighter “infused” reds, orange wines and skin-contact whites.

For the most part, however, region remains a less useful guide to rosé style than producer – and that’s true all over the world. While rosé is capable of being a terroir wine (it can have a sense of place), it’s the decisions made in the winery that have the most significant effect on style. The general drift towards paleness notwithstanding, the past five years have seen a range of serious rosé winemakers experiment with what’s possible in rosé in sometimes fascinatingly delicious ways. And whether they’re playing with skin or lees contact, with oak, steel or amphora, or even holding back releases to give their wines time to age, the rosé scene has never been more diverse.