FIVE ROSÉS, Five Places One summer told in pink
- Jul 24
- 5 min read
WINE- SUMMER EDIT
Instead of tasting notes — the peach, the citrus, the wet stone, all of which you can read on any label — let me give you the doors. Five bottles. Five places where they first found me. Five memories that no score or vintage chart could ever explain.
I did not plan to become someone who cares about rosé. I was converted, glass by glass, place by place by a garden in Venice, by a Roman piazza at dusk, by the yachts of Monte Carlo rendered as white commas in a blue sentence. Rosé, I have come to understand, is not a category of wine. It is a category of occasion. And some occasions stay with you long after the bottle is empty.
CÔTES DE PROVENCE · DOMAINES OTT
01
Clos Mireille "Ott"
"My first Ott was not in Provence at all. It was in Venice -at a long al fresco lunch in the garden of the Aman, the Grand Canal moving quietly beyond the hedges like a guest too elegant to interrupt."
There is something surreal about drinking Provence in Venice - the driest, palest wine in the most liquid city on earth. The Clos Mireille arrived in that unmistakable amphora-shaped bottle, and I remember thinking: some wines are introductions and some are arrivals. This one was an arrival. The garden of the Aman at midday, with the canal glittering beyond the green, with the white tablecloth and the stillness that only Venice on a weekday can produce -the Mireille was exactly right for it. Not loud. Not showy. Precise, mineral, entirely at ease with its own beauty. I have had it many times since. Every sip carries a little Venetian light in it.
FIRST TASTED at ARVA ALFRESCO- Aman Venice · Grand Canal
CÔTES DE PROVENCE · CHÂTEAU D'ESCLANS
02
Whispering Angel
"The angel whispered to me for the first time in Rome, at Ristorante Camponeschi on Piazza Farnese with the Palazzo glowing like a stage set and the evening doing that Roman thing where it refuses to end."
It has since become the most famous rosé in the world. You will find it everywhere, and some will tell you that is a flaw. I respectfully disagree. Fame has not changed the whisper — it has simply ensured that more people get to hear it. But for me it will always taste of that first Roman night: the white tablecloths of Camponeschi, the Piazza Farnese arranged outside the terrazza like a set designed by someone with an excessive budget and an extraordinary eye, and a glass of pale pink wine that leaned close and said something quiet and entirely meant for me. The name, I have always thought, is exactly right. It does not shout. Angels do not shout.
FIRST TASTED at Ristorante Camponeschi · Piazza Farnese · Rome
CÔTES DE PROVENCE · BRAD PITT & PERRIN
03
Château Miraval
"Monte Carlo, a terrace whose name I have honestly forgotten and I have decided the forgetting is part of the story. What I remember is everything else: the harbour below, the yachts arranged like white commas in a blue sentence."
I discovered Miraval on the Côte d'Azur, on a terrace overlooking a harbor full of beautiful yachts each one, with every sip, seeming to belong more naturally to the scene. Some wines demand your full attention; Miraval simply kept us company while the Riviera did the talking. Perhaps that is its great talent: a wine confident enough to let the view be the star. The bottle is beautiful — round and generous. The colour is pale salmon, almost translucent in the afternoon light. And the taste is a kind of easy elegance that suits a terrace over the sea better than almost anything else I know. I cannot tell you the name of the restaurant. I remember the yachts. I remember the colour of the light. I remember Miraval.
FIRST TASTED on a terrace above the harbor · Monte Carlo · Côte d'Azur
CRU CLASSÉ · CÔTES DE PROVENCE
04
Symphonie — Château Sainte Marguerite
"A fiercely windy evening at the Marbella Club. The kind of wind that bends the palms and makes the waiters exchange glances. We were certain dinner on the terrace would be cancelled. Then, at the exact hour we were seated, the wind stopped. Completely."
As if someone backstage had flipped a switch. The palms straightened. The tablecloths settled. The candles, which had been fighting for their lives, stood still. It was the kind of theatrical silence that makes a night feel like it has been choreographed specifically for you. And into that silence, a beautiful Asturian waitress — someone who clearly understood that the moment deserved the right wine — proposed the Symphonie. The name alone, on a night like that, was irresistible. It remains the only wine I associate entirely with the quality of silence: the sudden, gifted silence after wind. A Cru Classé from Provence with extraordinary finesse, a pale copper colour, and a persistence on the palate that mirrors the way that silence stayed with us for the entire evening.
FIRST TASTED at Marbella Club · Terrace Dinner · Andalusia
"When a wine chooses its own moment ,when it arrives in weather, in unexpected theatre, proposed by someone who knows what they are doing — no sommelier's recommendation will ever match it."
CÔTES DE PROVENCE · LE CANADEL
05
Château Léoube
"And here I must confess something: I cannot remember my first Léoube. Somewhere in Barcelona, it could be at Mirabé in Tibidabo. I think a terrace, probably; summer, certainly. At first this bothered me. Then I understood."
The other four rosés belong to places I visited -grand, memorable occasions framed by extraordinary settings. Léoube is different. It slipped so naturally into my Barcelona life that it never needed a grand entrance. It became the wine of a Tuesday evening on the balcony, of a Saturday lunch that stretched into afternoon, of the kind of summer day that does not ask to be remembered because it is already enough. There is a version of love that announces itself with ceremony, and a version that simply settles in quietly and stays to understand, is the highest compliment a wine can receive.
"There is a version of love that announces itself with ceremony, and a version that simply settles in quietly and stays. Léoube is the second kind."
FIRST TASTED somewhere in summer · Barcelona
THE ONE STILL WAITING · A NOTE APART
tter, t
"So here is my proposal for your summer: choose your rosé not by the score on the label, but by the door you want to open. Venice, Rome, Monte Carlo, Marbella, Barcelona -mine are set. The next glass you love will not just be a wine. It will be a place you can return to, chilled and unhurried, whenever the sun is right and the evening is long enough." by Donata
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