THE WINE COLUMN
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F YOU’RE A WINE DRINKER, UNLESS you’ve been living under a rock, you will have noticed a surge in the amount of rosé wine on our shelves over the past few years.
What has also changed, however, is who is doing the drinking. Gone are the days of a female-only audience who like a sweet style in hot pink because it’s pretty, it’s girly and it’s summertime. Real men now drink pink - and all year round, it turns out. In a sea of pale and dark ro sé wines, some sweet, some dry, where no one seems to know what they’re getting, there’s one key region that’s leading the way for its consistency, quality and charm: Provence, France. Provençal Rosé is famously pale and dry, with a
creamy weight and complexity that belies its powder pink looks. It’s a style you can rely on and one that goes with everything from media launches and film premieres on the beach in Cannes, to intricate food matches at the finest dining establishments in mid- winter. Provençal pinks are not just wine; they are a lifestyle, one that once back home in Blighty, has us heading to the nearest wine shop to seek out the names that will bring summer back into our lives again: Mirabeau, Chêne Bleu, Aix, Whispering Angel and, of course, the grandfather of them all, Domaines Ott. But it wasn’t always this way.
The estate built a reputation quite quickly for fine, textural white wines
Côtes de Provence is the only French appellation
dedicated purely to high quality, fine pink wines and it owes its name and success to one man with a vision: Marcel Ott. Marcel and his wife moved to Provence from Alsace in 1896 after a grand wine tour of the country. The vine louse that destroyed many of Europe’s vines at the time had wreaked havoc in Provence, but Marcel fell in love with the area. Land was cheap, so they stayed and planted vines again, only this time, with different grapes: Sémillon and Vermentino for white wines and Grenache, Cinsault and Syrah for the pinks and reds. The estate built a reputation quite quickly for fine, textural white wines. There were pink wines in the region then, but much darker and sweeter than those we know now. Wanting something a little different, something more weighty and dry, a bit like the Alsace wines he was used to, Marcel pioneered a new style of pale, dry rosé. He sold it alongside his famous whites as a serious pink, where it quickly developed its own reputation as a boutique wine available only to those in the know. The question of moving again came up - they were practically giving away land in North Africa - but Marcel’s wife put her foot down. She wasn’t going anywhere. The Otts stayed and the appellation as we now know it, began to flourish.
SAVILE ROW STYLE MAGAZINE 63
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