Holiday parties are in full swing and whether you are hosting a soirée at home or are out and about, here is what we are leaning towards. We’ve also got you covered on ideal hostess gifts if you are doing the rounds this season. Cheers!

Rosé wine no longer has a season! Thankfully, because we can’t get enough of Whispering Angel. Made from Grenache, Cinsault and Rolle (Vermentino), its pale color is pleasing to the eye and the rewarding taste profile is full and lush while being bone dry with a smooth finish.

Sacha Lichine, the winemaker and founder of Whispering Angel, says it’s about time rosé took off in Singapore

Sacha Lichine will tell you it takes a lot of ‘shoe leather’ to build a brand. Gauging by the meteoric success of Whispering Angel by Chateau d’Esclans, the brand he created, Lichine must have worn out his fair share of shoes.
Sixteen years ago, Lichine introduced 130,000 bottles of the first vintage of Chateau d’Esclans, including Whispering Angel, the entry-level superstar, Rock Angel, Les Clans and Garrus, the most expensive rosé to hit the market at €100 (S$140). The four rosés were of similar hues of pink and, yet, of different tastes, textures and flavours.
Unlike most Provencal rosés made in stainless steel, his wines are barrel fermented—except Whispering Angel—and lees-stirred to give them body and a creamy texture, all while preserving the alluring colour.

Recently part-acquired by the Moet Hennessy group, Lichine won’t share the sales numbers anymore, but we estimate sales to be well above and beyond the 6 million mark recorded in 2007. More so, Whispering Angel is well established as the market leader for the Provence rosés and has contributed, in a large way, to the rosé revolution sweeping the world.

Having washed the world in hues of peach and pink, Lichine’s eyes are now set on Singapore. “I think it’s about to take off here,” he says in a quietly confident tone.

Not that he hasn’t tried to charm the red dot before. Back in 2011, he introduced the wines to Singapore when the market was seduced by powerful Robert Parker-approved reds. Rosé, as he recalls, was “a bit ahead of the game.”

As we take our seats, Lichine, in his signature open-collar blush pink shirt and dark suit with his glasses resting on his head, shares the details of the Chateau d’Esclans sales blitz taking place in real-time. How does it work? The seasoned entrepreneur obliges: “You go out, you shake hands, you make friends, and you sell wine.”

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“Born in Bordeaux, baptised in a barrel.”

No stranger to the vinous world, Lichine absorbed the craft from his illustrious father, Alexis Lichine—the Bordeaux producer and wine writer.

His fondness for rosé developed during family holidays. “My father used to go to Cote d’Azur, and we used to bring our wines.” At the time, he says, “We were making some rosé in Bordeaux, just for ourselves, not to sell.”

Yet another style of rosé formed the inspiration for Chateau d’Esclans. “I think rosé champagne helped me a lot. Twenty-five years ago, you couldn’t sell rosé champagne because it just was unknown.” The category has since blown up with Billecart-Salmon, Ruinart and Bollinger leading the way, and it’s even more expensive than blanc de blanc. “So, I said to myself, if rosé sparkling can sell for a premium … why couldn’t still rosé.”

The lifestyle brand with terroir-driven wine

After selling his father’s property in Bordeaux, he moved to Provence and found a beautiful estate in La Motte. “I’d visited 32 properties for eight years, and I just kept returning to this place because it was magical. It was beautiful,” he says. Chateau d’Esclans is a 267-hectare property in La Motte-en-Provence, which has now expanded to 400 hectares.

By his side was Patrick Léon, the former winemaker of Mouton Rothschild. Together, they brought Bordeaux first growth wine-making standards of hand-picking grapes, optimal sorting, and rigorous quality control. Notably, they developed a state-of-the-art temperature-controlled barrel for vinification.

Each wine has its distinctions. For instance, the light and fruity Whispering Angel picked its name from two angel heads at the property chapel, who appear to be whispering to each other and at the highest echelon, Garrus, is made exclusively from 80-year-old Grenache and Rolle vines found on the estate.

In addition to Grenache and Rolle or Vermentino, which adds texture and richness, there’s a smidgen of Cinsault and Tibouren for floral notes. The range has since expanded to new labels like Pale and The Beach, which appeal to the younger market.

But no one was drinking rosé then. The category at the time was represented by “either Zinfandel or Rosé d’Anjou with 17 grams of sugar that your grandmother drank,” Lichine says.

Through sheer tenacity and a little inspiration from Estée Lauder, Lichine found worldwide success. “We did things the old-fashioned way. I remember reading stories of Estée Lauder who went around America and shook retailers’ hands, and they never forgot it.”

Chateau d’Esclans wines are sold in 106 countries and the brand is registering a 25 to 30 per cent yearly growth.

Is rosé a serious wine?

The indefatigable 62-year-old is far from resting his feet. He is intent on having rosé accepted in the wine world as a serious wine, not just an aperitif.

The ‘lifestyle’ image of the wine, which helped make it popular with the largest consumer group, the millennials, is the same that prevents some from taking rosé seriously. And he has yet to win over his sternest critics, the sommelier community. “The sommeliers have never taken rosé seriously. They don’t like them. They don’t want them. They don’t think it’s real wine,” he says. 

Irrespective, Lichine is not one to throw in the towel. “I think the market is still very small, but the time is right,” he declares when talking of Singapore. “When we started in the US, the market was nonexistent as well. And now we’re the largest selling French wine in the US.”

Mixed news last week for wine drinkers. Research by scientists at Rush Medical Center in Chicago claims that a glass of red with dinner could slash your risk of developing dementia. Just don’t start too young, say rival researchers at the Uniformed Services University in Maryland, who claim that children who are given even a sip of l’eau rouge – water reddened by wine – are more likely to end up with addiction problems.

Perhaps the answer, then, is for the children to drink natural wine, which might be at least good for their digestive system, according to another study. Or barolo, the preferred grape of “emotionally stable” drinkers, according to an investigation into links between wine preference and personality by researchers at Italian universities. Either way, if you are among the 60% who are now “sober curious” – intention, rather than action, being the operative here – the chances are you’ll be decanting your cellars into your moisturiser, as Brad Pitt does with his new wine-inspired skincare line, Le Domaine. So long as everyone avoids Buckfast wine. Sales are up in Scotland, leading some to (incorrectly) fear an increase in crime. Happy fortified wine season, one and all.

These are all reports from the news last week. Reports that might lead you to need a glass of chablis if only to offset the last item. Because there are few things that capture the British imagination like the pros and perils of drinking wine. There may well be something in the often contradictory science, but the fact it’s investigated in the first place suggests there’s a market for the results. Gin might be mother’s ruin, but it’s wine that will finish off the rest of us.

“Wine pushes people’s buttons,” agrees Aaron Ayscough, a well-regarded American wine writer living in Paris. “Readers tend to have an emotional response to it. Probably because [it is] laden with two, often contradictory associations: that of luxury, and that of a rural, pastoral milieu. When we examine wine as a dietary component, we are making an implicit appeal to the wisdom of a [lost] rural past.”

“Everyone is chasing a notion of pastoral lifestyle purity that has become immensely valued today precisely because it has mostly vanished in contemporary society,” says Ayscough. Wine’s centrality to that vision of a lost idyll is part of its symbolic potency. And if you like drinking wine and see the drinking of wine as being part of your character, you’re not going to like being told you shouldn’t be doing it.

My generation grew up with Lambrini girls, while Gen Z apparently prefer Whispering Angel

Last year, the UK produced 67,097 hectolitres (one hectolitre equals about 133 bottles). Italy, however, produced more than 50 million. Climate change might alter this. But wine, on these northern isles, is still a symbol of the other, the exotic.

It’s the stuff of rural holidays and European dining, but there’s also an idea that it’ll get you drunk in an acceptable, but cleansing way. For some middle- and upper-middle-class baby boomers, this is pretty much a philosophy to live by. “Wine, and particularly natural wine, has become a potent symbol within this cultural phenomenon,” Ayscough says.

It’s also, increasingly, pan-generational, recently acquiring a sort of millennial/hipster following. Annabel’s, which calls itself “one of the most elegant clubs in the world”, has just launched wine nights for younger clients. @dalstonwineclub, a fun women-led initiative, run Beaujolais nights and feature shots of wine bottles on its Instagram, run through a soft filter. There’s a wine shop down the road from me whose name is written in bubble writing but which I’m too intimidated to enter, despite being its target audience.

Class-association is the thing that no one wants to talk about. My generation grew up with Lambrini girls, while Gen Z apparently prefer Whispering Angel, a sparky rosé Adele raves about. My friends and I dabbled in both. But Whispering Angel is not cheap. It just positions itself as fun rather than earnest.

You can find Whispering Angel in Vinoteca stores and you can also order it through their online store.