Drink - Victoria Moore on the rehabilitation of rose
Autumn begins to cast a scythe-like shade over the dwindling days, and summer seems to be sighing its last. But perhaps the sun will shine again. In the hope that an Indian summer may be almost upon us, I am shaking my latest love into a colonial suit and slipping myself into a tana lawn cotton dress and repairing to the garden to enjoy a glass or six of rose.
You do have to pretend when drinking rose in England. And it's no good when there's a nip in the air. There has to be a good warmth to the yellowing, late-year sunlight if the cold smell of autumn soil curling from the flower beds is to be disguised. Think of crunching the tiny bones of charred sardines freshly hooked from the salty seas off Portugal. Think of the balminess of a Provencal villa high above the glittering, cobalt-blue Mediterranean. And now, take the bottle of rose from the fridge, be glad of the coolness of the dewy perspiration on its slender shoulders and simply pour a pair of glasses.
Poor old rose and my latest love, its long-time champion, have been much mocked in recent years. He is stalwart and loyal and has always glugged despite the lampshade jokes and the fact that there's only ever one bottle on even the most encyclopaedic winelist. Now that there are a lot of really decent varieties on the market and drinking rose no longer affords the opportunity for social humiliation it once did, he is claiming trendsetter status. Well, you know what they say about stopped clocks.
Though in some areas rose is made simply by blending red and white wine, there is no reason why its pedigree should be so derided. The better roses are not mongrels at all, being made from black grapes whose skins are left in contact with the fermenting juice just long enough for the wine to acquire its reddish tinge.
In the 1970s one of the only roses known to swingers was Rose d'Anjou, a medium-sweet wine from the Loire now too associated with car-key parties and Liebfraumilch to appeal to our desire for sophistication. There are better sweetish roses and they tend to be made of white zinfandel and hail from California. Delightfully pink and tasting of strawberries, they do, however - in the manner of a pom-pom cheerleader - come dangerously syrupy, almost like milkshake concentrate. Really these are for the kids, if you choose to bring your children up that way.
But as I discover, courtesy of my latest love, there are some brilliant dry roses. So, I ask, slitty-eyed, trying to catch him out, where are they from?
He explains that at the southern edge of France lie the regions of Provence and Languedoc-Roussillon, whose vineyards were planted by the Romans and stretch virtually the length of the coast. Two thousand years later, they are still producing wine that is pleasing to the palate, though it is disappointing that so few of their roses are available here.
My latest love has isolated his new best friend from this area and is pouring from a bottle of Chateau Lascaux 1997 (from the Languedoc). As he does so, he expounds on the virtues of rose from the Navarra region in Spain and the Veneto in Italy. I am astonished at his apparent knowledge. He even seems to know where Navarra is (jigsawed on to the south-west corner of France, extending down from the Pyrenees). And that Catherine the Great was said to be fond of robust reds and fresh roses. And that Navarra's predominant grape is the red garnacha tinta.
I am in a state of some shock. It's nothing to do with the wine, though it is beautifully soft and fresh - the perfect aperitif. It's just that, well, facts belong to football (for example, the number of goals scored by Leeds United from a corner in the Premiership last season: one, Sheffield Wednesday at home).
His favourite Spanish rose, I am told, is Chivite Gran Ferudo 1998. Earnestly, he says it is as clean on the palate as a David Beckham cross. Summer just ended.
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