The saying “the best view comes after the hardest climb” was validated on Sunday as the Jamaica Food + Drink Festival Brunch In The Hills team reintroduced their sponsors, key clients, and festival devotees to yet another of the country’s hidden gems: White Mist at Peter’s Rock.
The winding trek from Norbrook to Peter’s Rock — a peak in Woodford, St Andrew — was, for want of a better word, rocky, but the breathtaking vistas on arrival were worth every bump in the road.
The magnificent array of culinary delights aptly labelled brunch bites courtesy of Trevanne Donegal for Visa and well-appointed Select Brands bars were welcome sights, as too, the misty cityscape in the background. Guests settled readily in the spectacular setting which was further enhanced by Shikima Hinds and team for Events Concierge.
Brunch wrapped with two patrons walking away with paintings by Jamaican artist Alphanso Blake courtesy of NCB Capital Markets.
Alex Diard (right), business development manager from the famed Chateau D’Esclans, introduced Carreras Limited Chairman Patrick Smith (left) and Seprod Group of Companies CEO Richard Pandohie to the three-litre bottle of Whispering Angel Rosé. (Photo: Garfield Robinson)Select Brands Luxury Portfolio Manager Debra Taylor Smith sipped Whispering Angel Rosé while delighting in the stunning views from Peter’s Rock. (Photo: Garfield Robinson)
Slice of Life: Louis Poulsen launches the Pale Rose collection, the new Apple Watch Series 9 and more
By Jesslyn Lye, Janice Sim and Amelia Chia
As the end of the year approaches, a plethora of intriguing ventures and brand launches offers plenty to look forward to. On the culinary front, the new Whispering Angel Vintage 2022 rosé proves the perfect gastronomic companion for summertime culinary experiences.
There have been many estates in recent years that have tried to push rosé into the premium category, but few have been as successful as Château D’Esclans, Sacha Lichine’s Provence estate that is in the final throes of a takeover by LVMH. To try and unravel some of the secrets of its success, both with Whispering Angel and its super-premium wines including Rock Angel, Château D’Esclans, Les Clans and Garrus, The Buyer’s Victor Smart travelled to St Tropez to meet up with global marketing director Paul Chevalier and taste and rate the new wines.
By Victor Smart
“Les Clans reminds me of a Burgundy. Garrus reminds me of vintage Champagne without the bubbles – an old bottle of Champagne that has been sitting there for 30 years,” says Château d’Esclans’ Paul Chevalier.
Château d’Esclans was acquired in 2006 with the aim of making the greatest rosés in the world
Even those who have built a global rosé brand worth hundreds of millions may still hanker for the cachet accorded to traditional, stuffier French wine regions. Thus, as Château d’Esclans nudges buyers of Whispering Angel to trade up to pricier wines in its range, its comparators are not just the likes of Sancerre but august names like Meursault. If that seems heresy to purists, it may be time to recognise that the rosé category has moved from poolside onto serious wine and is now hellbent on moving up the ladder to full connoisseur status.
Château d’Esclans, founded by the legendary American-educated Sasha Lichine, is bracing itself for prestige goods firm LVMH to complete its extended takeover. Already, when we visit the Côte de Provence estate there is a young man from HQ with the demeanour of a management consultant discussing strategy. Who knows, but celebrity chefs may soon be onsite catering for guests helicoptered in from St Tropez.
Global marketing director Paul Chevalier took The Buyer through Château d’Esclans’ full range
But, for the moment, it is still the existing team, such as global marketing director Paul Chevalier, which guides us through the tasting of the seven-wine range. On his CV, Chevalier – who splits much of his time between Florida and a farm in the Pyrenees – has lustrous names like Veuve Clicquot, Château Margaux and Cloudy Bay.
The name Whispering Angel was inspired by a relief of two winged figures high above the altar in the château’s chapel. Rivers of gold have been spun from the brand, originally tailored for the US market where it is the biggest-selling French wine.
The d’Esclans team shows a massive attention to detail underpinned by sophisticated technology. The winery pioneered barrel-fermented luxury rosé. Those wines aged in barrels are individually monitored and each kept at a precise temperature. Meanwhile, an optical sorter scrutinises each grape to eliminate any defects. There’s loads of dosh for investment, of course. But, in addition, another key to success is that a tried and tested approach is applied across a range of wines retailing at hugely different prices, riffing on a medley of Grenache, Rolle (aka Vermentino), Syrah and Cinsault.
One of the Château d’Esclans wines aimed at a younger demographic
At the bottom of the range are two cheapish wines designed to whet the appetites of younger, poorer drinkers. The Pale retails for around £15 a bottle and The Beach for a pound or two more. The first is more urban, and the second more relaxed and poolside.
In the middle of the range comes the phenomenon that is Whispering Angel (£22 retail). This is the staple, of course, made in steel tanks from Grenache, Cinsault and Rolle. The sheer scale of its success seems to have been a surprise even to the likes of Chevalier. He points to the fruit, its mouthfeel and viscosity as key attractions behind the “satisfaction” it delivers. This has validated the winery’s basic approach for the whole range.
“The idea is that Grenache is hypothetically our Pinot Noir and Rolle is our Chardonnay, and we blend the two. We tend to use as much as we can of the Rolle which adds to the viscosity and aromatics while Grenache gives us structure and fruit”. Cinsault doesn’t add or take away very much but is a good blender; that grape disappears as you go up the range.
This takes us on to our main business here – the four pricier wines: Rock Angel, Château d’Esclans, Les Clans and Garrus. All of these use estate grapes and are aged in oak for varying periods.
Rock Angel (we’re tasting the 2022 at £24 retail) is around 55% grapes from the estate with around a quarter aged in oak barrels – something that gives it more body than the unoaked Whispering. “Rock has more weight and more length with more rocky minerality. There’s more going on – we’re looking at the Sancerre consumer who wants to change it up.”
For the rest of the wines we move to the 2021 vintages as the better wines takes longer to open up. Château d’Esclans(retail £35) is principally Grenache with about 30% Rolle, but with about half aged in oak and with more time in the barrel. The aim here is more precision and elegance. “Why if you were a consumer, would you choose this?”, asks Chevalier rhetorically. “Because you are into St Aubin or Pouilly Fuissé and hence into specific styles. So you want something more, and there are few other options.”
Moving on to the prestige cuvée level there are two styles. Les Clans (retail £50) is a Grenache/Rolle blend from old vines on the estate and is 100% barrel fermented. On the palate there are pineapple and ginger notes with hints of black liquorice.
Each barrel has its temperature continuously monitored and kept constant
Putting rosé juice into an oak barrel for a year and leaving it there was frankly experimental. Chevalier says: “We didn’t even know how to sell it because it was so expensive. So we said, why don’t we talk to people who understand white Burgundies like Mersault, vintage champagne, or expensive Californian Chardonnays. So it became a small batch rosé for a consumer that didn’t exist in a category that was totally misunderstood.”
Finally, we come to Garrus which has the same basic recipe but which is made from the oldest, choicest vines including a single parcel of nearly 100 year old Grenache vines. With rich, spicy notes and a creamy finish, the emphasis here is concentration.
“Garrus has more power, structure and body. Les Clans reminds me of a Burgundy. Garrus reminds me of vintage champagne without the bubbles – an old bottle of champagne that has been sitting there for thirty years.”
The top wine has variously scored from 93 to 96 points. It has a bold price of £140 which was the world’s most expensive pink ‘un until Gerard Bertrand launched Clos du Temple. How much further can once-derided rosé go in competing with the stars in the old firmament of French wines? We shall see.
Two peas in a pod: Paul Chevalier and The Buyer’s Victor Smart (r-l) with the Whispering Angel cherubs above the chapel
Pamper yourself with one of the new generation of super luxurious pink wines
By David Williams
Château d’Esclans Garrus, Côtes de Provence 2021 (£120.50, clos19.com) The irresistible rise of cult rosé estate Château d’Eslcans is one of the more remarkable stories in wine in recent years. When the man behind it, Sacha Lichine, the French-American son of the Russian émigré wine writer and Bordeaux estate proprietor Alexis Lichine, set up shop in Provence in 2006, his plan to make “fine” rosé looked to many like an act of folie de grandeur. Pink wine, after all, was seen as something pleasantly refreshing but essentially simple for sipping on hot summer days, a style that no serious oenophile could possibly compare to the best examples of red or white. Lichine’s top wine Garrus was the startling challenge to this conventional wisdom. Made from a mix of old-vine red grenache and the white vermentino using techniques more akin to the top white wines of Burgundy (it’s fermented and aged in oak rather than the stainless steel of most pink wine), its resistible price tag makes you want to hate it. But the latest, luxuriously silky, spicy-toasty vintage has a kind of graceful power that is intensely alluring.
The Beach by Whispering Angel, Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence, France 2022 (from £16.50, Morrisons, Tesco, Waitrose, Majestic)
The audacious Garrus was the canny Lichine’s way of persuading wine critics to ditch their preconceptions about rosé and get them to talk about his nascent project. But the name which catapulted the estate to a level of fame that is exceptionally unusual for a wine brand was Whispering Angel. When I visited d’Esclans in September, its glitzy boutique was busy with impeccably dressed wealthy young things taking a break from their holidays on the nearby Côte d’Azur to make a pilgrimage to the home of Adele, Victoria Beckham and Malia Obama’s favourite wine. What is it about Whispering Angel that has made it such a rapid success, growing from about 130,000 bottles in its first vintage in 2006 to more than 1m 12-bottle cases today? A mix of astute marketing and good luck is part of the story; but tasting the latest 2022 vintage of both the main Whispering Angel (£20, widely available) and the, in my opinion, much better-value spin-off The Beach, I was struck by how effectively they deliver the soft-focus strawberry-and-cream, melon and gentle citrus freshness that is the hallmark of good Provence rosé.
Garrus from the Château d’Esclans estate: an exceptional rosé
Summer officially ends this Saturday but the sunny days should last for a while longer and, with them, lunches and dinners accompanied by chilled rosé.
Recognizable by its very light color, the Garrus is certainly the most famous of them. Developed by oenologist Patrick Léon, the Garrus vintage comes from an almost century-old vineyard. Planted at the top of a hill between Cannes and Saint-Tropez, it is part of the Château d’Esclans estate , also known for the quality of its white wines.
Produced for the first time in 2006 during the purchase of the wine estate by the French entrepreneur and winemaker Sacha Lichine, the Garrus rosé is based on exceptional know-how which has continued since the holding company Moët Hennessy, already owner of estates prestige like Veuve Clicquot, Dom Pérignon or Ruinart, became the owner of the place in 2019.
The harvest continues in September and the Grenache and Rolle from which the rosé is produced are still harvested by hand. They are also placed in crates with a capacity of less than 10 kg in order to avoid crushing the grains. These are then sorted manually. Only those whose shape, size, color and appearance meet the specifications are pressed. The less tannic juices are then put into oak barrels renewed every three years.
Garrus rosé is no longer the most expensive rosé in the world today (on this point it competes with Muse de Miraval from Jolie-Pitt-Perrin, Étoile from Domaines Ott and Clos du Temple from Gérard Bertrand ) but it remains an exceptional wine, the result of excellent know-how.
The French have swapped their red wine for rosé – it feels unseasonal and wrong
They’re drinking it all year round but like putting pumpkins outside your home in April or singing Christmas carols in August, it’s unseemly
By Celia Walden
Are the French having some kind of identity crisis? I only ask because if there are two areas they’re expert in – world leaders, even – it’s surely sex and wine. Yet yesterday we heard two bombshell news reports. First, that our Gallic cousins were turning to crude and clumsy Brits (and our hit TV series, Sex Education) for help in teaching youngsters about everything from flirting and consent to foreplay and nude selfies – and second, that with red wine sales in France now plummeting, rosé had become the French tipple of choice. They’re even drinking it in winter.
Rosé. A few years ago, just the word would have given me a tingle of excitement, conjuring up, as it did, everything lovely: the promise of summer, of long lunches, of tipsy nights, pretty dresses, flirting, clinking ice cubes, laughter.
I’m not sure I would have got through the pandemic without Whispering Angel, which became such a social fixture in my friendship group that it eventually had its own emoji. But you can have too much of a good thing, as it turns out, and last year, as summer turned into autumn and then winter, I remember thinking: “Why are people still drinking rosé?”
Like decking out the front of your house with pumpkins in April or singing Christmas carols in August, it felt wrong on an intrinsic level. And maybe that would have been enough to kill it for me, even without the rise of the Rosé Movement. Because suddenly, this innocent, far-too-easy-to-drink wine had become the avocado of the booze world.
You couldn’t scroll through Instagram without seeing a dozen, giggly girls in cute, cropped ‘La Vie En Rosé’ T-shirts or ‘Rosé All Day’ straw hats (full disclosure, I once had one). A raft of female celebrities – Kylie, Drew Barrymore, Sarah Jessica Parker – got into the rosé wine game, endlessly touting their wares, only a lot of it wasn’t from the gorgeous, peachy side of the family, but Côte de Provence’s brash, saccharine cousin: blush.
Once upon a time you couldn’t even order rosé in France – where it was dismissed as a “swimming pool drink” – out of season. Trying to do so would get you the same ferocious response as ordering your steak “well done”. It was all part of a national battle, waged daily, against vulgarity. So what on earth has happened?
The youth. That’s what. According to independent winemaker, Thomas Montagne, people, “especially the young” have ditched their traditional reds for “something easier to drink, [that] contains fewer tannins and feels more festive.”
I like to think that me going off rosé is a good sign: part of my evolutionary process. That I’m naturally going to mature into the kind of person who only drinks red wine and espressos and prefers the BBC World Service to LBC. Because with tastes, as with everything, you have to be aspirational – and surely the French have always understood that?
The best spots on Ibiza to sip cocktails and build your tan.
By Lissy Lubeck
Located on the upper east coast of the island, Nikki Beach Ibiza can be considered somewhat of a hidden gem to the tourists who frequent the resorts of San Antonio and Playa d’en Bossa. But it shouldn’t be. It’s rare that I venture to this end of the island myself. When I do, I am reminded of the beauty it holds. I spent the day at this stunning beach resort on Monday, soaking it all up on one of their gorgeous poolside sun loungers.
Nestled within a low key, stunning cove of refreshing blue aguas and dreamy yachts, I was in awe from the moment I stepped foot into the Nikki Beach premises.
As my maiden visit, I was intrigued to see how it compared to other beach clubs in Ibiza, as I’d heard it’s the perfect sweet spot between chilled out relaxation and the fun-loving vibes found elsewhere.
Greeted by a host of gorgeous looking ladies at reception, my friends and I were guided to our bed for the day, which came with its own sofa, umbrella and table. I immediately fell into a state of zen, as the poolside DJ played chilled out sexy sounds and the Mediterranean sea glistened in the background.
Throughout the day, we moved between our heavenly sun lounger, the pool and sea, then paid the Nikki Beach restaurant a visit for lunch. We couldn’t have asked for a more perfect Monday.
The girls couldn’t quite believe that this is what I do for a living, this being a pinch me moment on their holiday!
We indulged in a range of delicious cocktails and a generously gifted on-the-house bottle of Whispering Angel rosé wine, not to mention an incredible platter of fruit and mini desserts they had put together.
There’s no need to lift a muscle at Nikki, as the hostesses are super attentive and fulfilled our needs twofold.
From making sure we were constantly topped up with refreshments and going out of their way to check in on us throughout the afternoon, their hard work and attention to detail doesn’t go unnoticed.
Whether you’re looking for a bit of daytime fun with your pals, a place to boogie and indulge in a mega-sized bottle of wine or simply relax the day away and read a book, Nikki Beach is the perfect place to do so.
It’s safe to say that I will be making a return before the end of summer, that’s a given.
Indulge in the world of exquisite rosé wines, where delicate hues meet captivating flavors.
By Paul Kushnera
In this exploration of the finest rosés, we delve into the artistry and craftsmanship that elevate this elegant varietal.
From sun-kissed vineyards to expert vintners, our journey uncovers the nuanced profiles and timeless appeal of rosé wines.
Discover the allure of blush-tinted elixirs that dance on the palate, offering a symphony of notes that range from fruity to floral.
Join us as we navigate the vineyards, uncork the stories, and celebrate the allure of these cherished pink libations.
Château d’Esclans Les Clans
Within the realm of exquisite rosé wines, Château d’Esclans Les Clans emerges as a true gem.
Embodying the epitome of elegance, this rosé offers a sensory journey that encapsulates the essence of Provence.
Its pale, ethereal hue entices the eye, while the palate is graced with layers of red fruit and subtle florals.
Les Clans stands as a testament to the art of rosé, an embodiment of the passion and expertise that define the finest in pink wine craftsmanship.
This rosé enchants the palate with its refreshing crispness and subtle minerality, making it an ideal companion for warm gatherings or leisurely afternoons.
Whispering Angel Rosé
Whispering Angel Rosé is a symphony of flavors that transports the senses to the sun-soaked vineyards of Provence.
Delicate aromas of red berries and white blossoms entice the nose, while the palate revels in notes of ripe peach and citrus.
Its crisp acidity and smooth finish make it a versatile companion for any occasion, from leisurely lunches to glamorous soirées.
Embark on a journey of elegance with Whispering Angel Rosé, where every sip whispers tales of indulgence.
I have always had a deep interest in the restaurant and bar industry. My restaurant experience began in 1997 at the age of 14 as a bus boy. By the time I turned 17 I was serving tables, and by 19 I was bartending/bar managing 6-7 nights a week.
In 2012, after a decade and a half of learning all facets of the industry, I opened my first restaurant/bar. In 2015, a second location followed, the latter being featured on The Food Network’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.
Château d’Esclans in southern France’s Côtes de Provence. (Photo courtesy of the winery)
Bertrand Léon sends free-run juice into 600-liter demi-muids for 11 months, stirring the lees twice a week. That translates into an undercurrent of richness to the already-rich piecrust and grapefruit-pith flavors. The intensity of its flavors should gain more clarity with time, and the wine has the structure to age.
91
Château d’Esclans 2021 Côtes de Provence Les Clans
$85
Every week, our editors highlight a wine that intrigued them in our blind panel tastings, expanding on their tasting note in this space. These are entirely editorial choices; there are no paid placements. Subscribers can also access the original tasting note by searching here.
