4 days ago
Forget celebrity labels – these are the Provence rosés really worth their price tag
When luxury-goods conglomerate LVMH acquired a controlling stake in Château d'Esclans – the makers of Whispering Angel – at the end of 2019, the deal crystallised the existence of a new era for Provence rosé.
Perhaps you feel all fuzzy and escapist about pale pink rosé from the south of France, like you might about croissants from a village boulangerie or chicken with a million cloves of garlic at a family-run bistro on a dappled square.
The reality, these days, is that a lot of Provence rosé is controlled by big money. It's not just the celebrity wine producers: the Brad Pitts and Carla Brunis. It's also the multi-millionaires and billionaires whose organisations sell this shimmering, pale pink liquid in beautiful bottles, like a fragment of a summer dream, to the likes of me and you.
Take the case of LVMH, whose founder and CEO, Bernard Arnault, is usually found near the top of Forbes 's billionaires list, not far beneath Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
As well as Château d'Esclans, LVMH also owns (since 2019) Château Galoupet, a historical rosé estate overlooking the Mediterranean, and (since 2023) a controlling stake in the well-known Château Minuty, close to St Tropez. Rosé wine specialist Elizabeth Gabay MW has estimated that the production of Whispering Angel alone (d'Esclans has several other brands) is around 14 million bottles and that Minuty's combined brands number around nine million bottles. For perspective, the entire Côtes de Provence appellation, covering some 50,000 acres, made the equivalent of 102 million bottles in 2023.
It doesn't stop there. If you shop in Waitrose, you may have been tempted by the beautiful ridged bottles of Ultimate Provence (sadly I'm not so keen on the £20 wine inside as I am on the vessel), which, along with Château de Berne, is part of MDCV, whose website claims sales of 'over 4 million bottles' from its French estates. The owner of MDCV is Mark Dixon, a Monaco-based The Sunday Times Rich List regular and the founder of the serviced office business IWG.
Now, I like some of the Minuty wines; they are typically streamlined and pure, with a silky strength. I also like Rock Angel by Whispering Angel (around £27.50) and, especially, the scented G de Galoupet Côtes de Provence (around £22.50, Ocado and Jeroboams), an immaculate Provence rosé that is recommended. But those prices are toppy.
Although not as toppy as the price of Lady A Rosé (£24.99 if you buy it at Selfridges, though it has just gone in to M&S and Ocado at £17.50), a wine that seems to be having a tilt at becoming the new Whispering Angel. It was created for the 40th birthday of Meghan Sussex's bestie Markus Anderson, has a butterfly motif designed by Damien Hirst on the bottle and is made at Château La Coste, which is owned by Irish property developer Paddy McKillen.
Soho House Chateau La Coste Lady A Rosé, £24.99, Selfridges
Lady A is marketed on the Ocado website as a 'Provence Rosé'. It is indeed crafted (their word) at Château La Coste, which is in Provence – but it doesn't carry the official Provence rosé appellation d'origine protégée (AOP). Instead, it has a more modest IGP Méditerranée designation – indication géographique protégée, or 'protected geographical indication'. Formerly known as vin de pays, IGP wines can be very good, and I often recommend them as budget-friendly alternatives to pricier Côtes de Provence or Côteaux d'Aix en Provence bottles. But in the case of Lady A, the taste doesn't justify the price.
If you're in for that level of spend, or thereabouts, I have listed the Provence rosés that I love below. Please note that as I write this it's early in the season and not all the wines I would like to have tasted have landed. But the sun is out, and we want pink in our glasses now.
I also have a more budget-friendly rosé article in the pipeline that will look at rosé from beyond the Provence AOPs. Watch out for that as there are some brilliant cheaper wines around this year and I have lots of tips. In the meantime, enjoy!
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