Provence rosé: our top 30
Provence stretches from the Mediterranean coast in the south to the foothills of the southern Alps in the north, from the Rhône valley in the west to Italy in the east. The three largest appellations of Côtes de Provence, Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence and Coteaux Varois en Provence together account for more than 90% of the volume of Provence rosé. The three work together as a marketing team and clearly market the word Provence in their appellation name and as a cohesive brand.
Côtes de Provence covers a large area, from the coast to higher inland sites. It has five regional zones identified as ‘denominations de terroir’. The coastal La Londe denomination and Pierrefeu, just inland, are both on schist soils, typically giving their wines a mineral, sometimes saline edge. Ste-Victoire’s limestone slopes produce wines with broader, fresher acidity, further emphasised by some altitude. Fréjus, meanwhile, on the red volcanic slopes of the Esterel massif, produces wines with more structure. And Notre-Dame-des-Anges in the warm central valley of Provence produces rounder, ripe fruit.
Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence, while equally diverse, has no indicated sub-zones, and Coteaux Varois en Provence is based on cooler uplands stretching to the north.
IDENTITY PARADE
Provence winemakers work hard to reconcile ‘Provence’ as a unifying brand that expresses a regional identity – and that clearly came through in this tasting. The vast majority of rosés tasted conformed to this identifiable ‘Provençal style’ of a paler-than-pale pink with ripe fruit and broad mouthfeel, a dry, mineral finish and fresh acidity. Only a few had the once-ubiquitous grapefruit thiol character, a symptom of yeasts and overly enthusiastic reductive winemaking.
Quality was consistently high (the only fault was excessivly reductive winemaking), with some squeaky-clean wines at all price points. The downside was an almost unending monotony
