Sacha Lichine can claim to be one of the principal architects of the great rose wine renaissance. He created the hugely successful Whispering Angel brand, a wine that is one of the stable of roses from Chateau d’Esclans in Provence. He owns Snappers, a Tecnomarinebuilt in Viareggio, Italy, in 1983, which is moored at Cogolin, near Saint-Tropez, and mostly used as a dayboat for customers and friends. His Mangusta 80, a more recent acquisition, is used by the family for trips and overnights along the Mediterranean coast.
Lichine often cites a phone call from Feadship as the moment he knew he had achieved a breakthrough with rosé wine: “They asked for the design and dimensions of the three-litre bottle of Garrus [the most luxurious of the Chateau d’Esclans rosés] because they were building a yacht for a client who had requested a fridge to fit it.”
Reaching this point meant going against the flow. Sixteen years ago, when Lichine bought Château d’Esclans, a beautiful estate in Provence, 25 kilometres from the Roman city of Fréjus on the Mediterranean coast, the decision to specialise in high-end rosé might have been considered a surprising move. Lichine’s background is in traditional fine wine. He was raised in Bordeaux, where his family owned Chateau Prieuré-Lichine in Margaux, which he ran for several years after his father’s death before selling it in 1999. He had also founded Borvin in 1990, a négotiant business that sells Bordeaux
