Best rosé wines available in the UK to try for summer 2022

With spring sunshine here, it’s Rosé all day…
By Nicky Rampley-Clarke

From Mykonos to St Tropez, drinking rosé has become synonymous with endless summer days in Europe’s most exclusive destinations, where long lunches are fuelled by only the palest picks from Provence and champagne-spraying is considered positively passé.
Far removed from the dark, fruity depths of Mateus – the original Portuguese variety popular in the 70s served from a (now-iconic) hip flask-inspired bottle – it’s undeniably Whispering Angel that can be credited with our new-found thirst for rosé. As the sexy poster child for premium pinks, and a status symbol that graces any gathering worth going to, it’s hard to fathom how supply keeps up with demand around the world.
Despite its fairly-recent rebrand as a day-drinking staple – a single snap from a social media influencer swirling a glass of the stuff is ‘Gram gold – rosé is one the oldest wines around. Ironic, isn’t it? That’s because its production methods are relatively simple, made from red wine grapes with a reduced time fermenting with the grape skins, while it can be created from any red wine grape in any wine-growing region. This gives it a pinker hue and a lighter flavour than reds.
That’s not to say that all rosé wines are made equal. Those crafted in Provence with their signature pale colour are certainly the most fashionable – and many argue, the most delicious – but getting more to grips with a glass (and really understanding its qualities) has given rise to a new wave of exciting producers and must-try brands.
Here, we’ve done the hard work – well, someone had to – and drank the most delicious rosés out there to compile the ultimate shopping list to steer your summer.
It’s time to clink the pink…

Created in the cellars of Chateau d’Escalans a revered estate in the hills of Provence that set out to create the greatest rosé on the planet – Whispering Angel has become a byword for the pale pinks so beloved of this region.
It’s succeeded, as its dusky colour and dry flavour has become famous, while its evocative name and beautiful bottle add to its cool credentials. While the producer has since brought out other bottles – Rock Angel and The Palm, amongst others – the original remains the best: made from Grenache, Cinasault and Rolle, it’s a shining example of its kind, and still leads the charge in the rosé renaissance.

Buy now £20, Waitrose

Oh, Sacha Lichine, you spoil us! Not content with creating what is the best rosé of recent times in Whispering Angel (above), the producer has now launched The Pale: a deliciously dry rosé that makes all others at this price point, quite frankly, pale in comparison.
With its bottle more akin to a gin or whisky served at a speakeasy, together with artwork inspired by early editions of the New Yorker, it’s hard to miss in a supermarket sweep. Inspired by the fresh sea air of the French Riviera, the wine itself is an aromatic and expressive blend of Grenache, Cinsault and Syrah grapes grown parallel to the Mediterranean coast. It’s these salty, sunny soils that lend the wine its dry yet fruity character. Summer bliss.

Buy now f 13.99, Waitrose

Island Getaways: A Philadelphian’s Guide to Vacationing in the Bahamas

Tropical bliss shines through in this easygoing paradise.
By Regan Fletcher Stephens

“Do you like this liquid sunshine?”

It was raining when we landed in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas.The flight was short and seamless, a new direct route on Frontier from Philly to the West Indies archipelago, and in a flash, my husband and I went from chaotic PHL to the black car whisking us to the Ocean Club, a Four Seasons Resort (rooms from $1,500), situated on the aptly named Paradise Island.
The driver’s inquiry put a positive spin on the weather, but either way, we didn’t mind it. Both the island and this resort, with its white sand beach, Versailles-inspired gardens, and general understated elegance (James Bond flick Casino Royale was filmed here), are well worth a visit, even in a little light rain.

It’s true the billowy gray clouds that passed over in intervals — dousing us to various degrees with that liquid sunshine — prevented us from playing tennis. (The courts were wet. And also, we didn’t try that hard.) But the rain didn’t stop us from floating in the infinity pool, longer than an Olympic pool — bordering the lawn, and with an oceanfront view. A refreshing mist of rainwater made a cool contrast to the pool’s heated warmth. Nor did a passing rainstorm keep us from curling up on lounge chairs under a beach umbrella, luxuriously reading books that, thanks to the three kids we’d left at home, we never get to read in real life. Or visiting the Balinese-style spa, or sipping glasses of Whispering Angel rosé in the fragrant gardens.

The endless appeal of rosé wine

There’s a good reason that a bottle of rosé seems to disappear so quickly. Great pink wine is delicious, says Nina Caplan. Plus, Jane MacQuitty’s top picks

By Nina Caplan

In the 1950s the great American writer AJ Liebling warned his readership off rosé wines, which, he complained, were popping up like measles all over the globe. For him, there was only one great rose:Tavel. Everything else was cheap run-off, dressed in pink by calculating incompetents who knew their lacklustre wines would sell no other way.
Tavel, just across the Rhone from Chateauneuf-du-Pape, certainly makes superb rosés, but the rest was unfair, even back then. Liebling could have tried the delicious apricot and orange-peel rosé made by Lucien Peyraud of Domaine Tempier, and I wish he had, because Lucien’s wife, Lulu, was a legendary cook who inspired Alice Waters in California and Simon Hopkinson in London — and I would have loved to read Liebling’s account of a meal chez Peyraud. By the time I met Lulu, she was 99 and no longer cooking. But she still knocked back her share of the bottle, told wicked jokes and ultimately lived to 102. If that’s not an advertisement for good rosé, what is?
Still, the person who ended the argument over whether rosé could be more than just a pretty drop is Sacha Lichine. Grandson of a Russian aristocrat who fled the revolution and son of the wine writer and Bordeaux entrepreneur Alexis Lichine, Sacha bought a Provencal estate, Chateau d’Esclans, in 2006 and fixed his sights on a serious pink wine. This wasn’t just opportunism. “Rose is the most difficult colour I’ve ever had to make good,” Lichine told me. His Garrus, made principally from a single patch of 100-year-old grenache vines was, for a while, the most expensive rosé in the world (it has since been overtaken by fellow Provencal Gerard Bertrand’s Clos du Temple), while his less rarified Whispering Angel is so globally popular it’s known as “Hamptons water”.
Snobbery about pink is even more rife than prejudice about wine, and rosé is where the two meet. Yet last summer, the bright cerise of Metisse, made (biodynamically, from the classic Languedoc grapes grenache, cinsault and carignan) by the rising star Maxime Magnon, chimed so perfectly with sunset over the Mediterranean that I still feel certain somebody crept on to our holiday balcony and siphoned off half the bottle. That’s the sign of a superlative rosé, to me: not the depth of colour, but the way the wine seems to evaporate in seconds, no matter how you try to linger over it.

Marques de Murrieta’s Primer, glowing orange-pink through its elegant faceted bottle and tasting of sundried red fruit and flowers, did this; so did the ephemeral peaches and lavender of Chene Bleu’s Rhone rosé. Chateau Leoube’s new limited edition, Rosé Singulier, with its tomato tang, evaporated too — even as a magnum. In Beechworth, north of Melbourne, Julian Castagna opened a bottle of his Allegro; I recall just a trace of rosehip and a lingering bitterness — which may simply have been my incredulity at its instant disappearance. The best orange wines are guilty of this, too: anyone who thinks only reds or whites have character should try Camf Pesseroles Brisat, which is rich yet dry and herbaceous, with the tint of autumn leaves. Paler is not automatically better, any more than blonde is: colour is not character, unless you are a painting, and character is what I want in a wine.
Which brings me back to Tavel. The best are deep raspberry yet dry as wit and pulsing with charisma; it’s easy to understand why Liebling loved them, as did Louis XIV, their colour perfect for a monarch known as the Sun King. L’Anglore is probably the most admired (and expensive), but Domaine de la Mordoree’s La Dame Rousse is gorgeous, with a bitter-orange tang and a cherry tint that glows … at least for the brief moments before, like the sunset it resembles, the wine vanishes.

Five of the best spring pinks

By Jane MacQuitty

2020 Flor de Muga Rioja Rosado, Spain
Scrumptious smoky, savoury Spanish rosado, made from 70 to 90-year-old garnacha bush vines and aged in French oak.
£19.99, waitrose.com

2020 Chateau Simone, Palette, France
A rare punchy, deep rosy-pink and sweet, morello-cherry Provencal star from a tiny appellation: Palette. £42.50, yapp.co.uk

2018 Château d’Esclans, Garrus, Cotes de Provence Rosé, France
An awesome barrel-fermented and matured 2018, with dreamy wood-smoke and tea-leaf pizzazz. f 100, clos 19.com

2019 Clos du Temple, Languedoc Cabrieres, France
Gerard Bertrand’s delicious minerally, oaky-smoky, orange-peel and vanilla-scented Clos du T is the world’s priciest pink.
£238, hedonism.co.uk

In less than three weeks spring will be here. The world needs some colorful delight right now. And with that in mind we are celebrating with our favorite things today.

By Elizabeth Taylor

TFOR SPRING SIPS… WE ADORE…

Whispering Angel is a joyful experience from start to finish. The brand is adored around the world and will be just as loved in your home. A classic COtes de Provence rosé it holds flavors of grapefruit and citrus combined with refreshing acidity.