Meghan Markle's rosé-tinted reality
The magnetism of rosé for business-curious celebs bears examining. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt started the trend by buying the vineyard Château Miraval in Provence in 2006 (and fighting like cats over it long after their divorce). Miraval felt on-brand for them at the time. But then came Snoop Dogg, Cameron Diaz ('all about clean ingredients'), Jon Bon Jovi, Sarah Jessica Parker, Drew Barrymore, Graham Norton, Gordon Ramsay and, of course, Kylie Minogue – who has nine types, including an alcohol-free variety. Kylie Rosé, simply called Kylie, is the UK's best-selling rosé. Its label looks like a pre-teen has been let loose in a Claire's Accessories. And yet off the shelves it flies – perhaps justifiably, given its sub-£10 price tag.
Rosé is cheap, but I can't say that I find it all that cheerful. Still, it must be the pinkness and indeterminateness of the wine that makes dollar signs flash in the eyes of all those celebrity vendors. Nobody seems much bothered by what rosé actually is: not-quite-red wine served at white-wine temperatures. It is made from red grapes and tinged by contact with the grape skins. We all think that dark red rosés – a suspect, magenta-adjacent lipstick hue – are inherently worse than the famous straw-tinted paler pinks. But the colour just comes down to maceration time, which is always short in rosé-world.
That's rosé for you: skin-deep. This tart of wines barely macerates, and spends next to no time crouching boringly in cellars, which costs producers in space and time but gives wine depth and structure. Out it pops – cheap as chips – and we all love it. Rosé sales are soaring around the world. It's not just Provence or Napa that is wanted: English and Welsh rosés is up 200 per cent at Majestic Wines, and 160 per cent at Aldi.
But the romance of wine – and especially rosé – is basically France. In France, people sit in heat and eat duck confit and baguette and get in the mood for love. The imagery is as far removed from the neon lights of mass production as possible. Meghan wants a world where everything is hand-picked and bespoke, and who has publicised her own detailed involvement in tasting and testing, using her own handwriting on the label. Yet even she is hawking a rosé made from Fairwinds Estate grapes, which is anything but a romantic producer. Devastated by wildfires, Meghan chose them as a show of support – but they are huge and dreary. They make wine for Barry Manilow, the TV show Yellowstone, and sports teams – and their website has a section devoted to work specifically with college fraternities.
I get it. When you substitute out red or white and replace it with the colour pink and the promise of sunsets in the south of France, of course it'll be popular – even though it's more likely to be drunk at a barbecue in Greater Manchester or suburban New Jersey. What I will never cease to find surprising is that the girly scrawl of Kylie or Meghan turns people on, not off.
Still, there is nothing wrong with this utter vulgarisation of a dubious-at-worst, sphinx-like-at-best type of wine. Good business is good business. And if celebrity rosés entrench the escapist appeal of rosé to a nation that goes mad when the temperature gets to what retailers now call the 'rosé tipping point' (20 degrees, when sales jump by 150 per cent), then fine by me.
But a word about rosés that aren't stamped with Meghan's macabre, perpetual invitation to take flight into love and light through her products. I've tried only a few rosés that ask for the glass to be finished. One was from Chêne Bleu – the winery run by Nicole Rolet, wife of Xavier Rolet, former head of the London Stock Exchange – and the other, oddly, is Whispering Angel, the (vulgar-looking) £25 stuff available at Waitrose from Château d'Esclans, which is now owned by LVMH, who is credited with reviving interest in rosé at a luxury level. Both are not only that straw-salmon colour; they also hold back their strawberry notes, while the mouth fills with something more tart and buttery. Still, if both of these were on offer, I'd go for a good fizz – boring old white, boring old bubbles, but genuinely effervescent. Not just pretty.
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