Rosé Wine Sitting Pretty in Pink
By: Ashley Thompson
I figure I might as well continue with the vino kick I’ve been on, and bring you some Earth-shattering statistics I heard through the grapevine. Rosé wine sales in France have overtaken white wine sales for the first time ever.
In a shocking turn of events, the wine that top producers from Bordeaux and Burgundy once refused to even produce has rocketed to the top of Old World wine hierarchy. Just a decade ago, only one in ten bottles of wine sold in France was a rosé. Today, it’s one in five.
This news has got to make a few of my friends and acquaintances in France’s Anjou region, where I lived for a semester in college, tickled pink. Along with the Côtes de Provence, Anjou—part of the majestic Loire Valley—is a veritable rosé powerhouse. The breezy pink drink accounts for around half of the the region’s wine production. And I’m not ashamed to admit that rosés accounted for nearly half of my wine consumption while there, although it might have had something to do with the fact that delectable bottles of Rosé d’Anjou were a mere 90 centimes.
After the jump: Plight of the “pizza rosé”
The U.K.’s Independent spoke with
Anjou-based Pierre Aguilas, one of the key figures on the French committee that governs country-wide wine regulations (Appellations d
Origine Côntrolées), about the impact this rosy trend will have on his region and beyond.
“Twenty years ago, people were saying rosé was doomed,” M. Aguilas said. “Now the demand is phenomenal. Young people especially, and women, have taken to rosé as a pleasure drink, a youthful drink, something which goes well with foreign food, such as Indian and Chinese or pizza, but also something that can be drunk chilled on a hot day just for the fun of it.
This is obviously wonderful news for us here in Anjou, since we produce some of the finest rosé wines anywhere.
What worries me is that some new producers will just throw their rosé together in a piggish way. A lot of bad, new rosé wines—what I call pizza rosé—would be bad news for all of us.
- Nat Geo Expeditions
The Independent also reported that similar trends are expected to sweep across both Britain and the United States. Red, White, and Rosé, anyone?
Photo: Flickr via merriewells
