Chilled pink wine on a hot summer night is still the Instagram symbol of summer—and winemakers in every region on the planet are launching new ones to fill your glass.
Yes, France's Provence—and its yacht-and-beach luxury lifestyle—have long been at the center of rosé's glamorous image, championed this spring in The Book of Rosé: The Provencal Vineyard that Revolutionized Rosé (Rizzoli; $75).
Not so fast. Only 126 of the 437 rosés listed by giant online retailer Wine.com hail from Provence.
The rest come from other parts of France and from countries around the globe. In Chile and New Zealand and Eastern Europe, for example, pink winemaking has grown more than 50% over the past decade or so.
That's according to the 2023 Rosé Wines Tracking Report, a collaboration between the Provence Wine Council and France AgriMer that covers 45 countries.
I've recently tasted more than 150 pink wines — even a rosé sake. Among them were fascinating new bottlings from New Mexico and Japan, Barolo country in Italy, Lebanon, islands in Greece, and tiny wineries in Oregon and California.
(Wine.com's 56 Golden State examples don't include the many rosés made in minuscule quantities by top Napa producers and now offered in winery tasting rooms and available for direct purchase.)
Today's wide range of hues, grape varieties and winemaking techniques mean bigger choices in style than ever.
The new pricing sweet spot roughly hovers from $20 to $35, which shows that most pink wines aim to be more than vin piscine, those swimming pool quaffers served in large glasses with lots of ice.
There's a surge in pink sparkling wines, $50-and-up luxury Napa rosés and serious oak-aged examples—which are not always so appealing.
By the way, don't shun the premium rosés showing up in dark glass bottles instead of clear glass that shows off the lusciously pink color. The reason is "light strike." Rosé is particularly susceptible to damage from exposure to sunlight; it can cause the wine to end up smelling like wet dog or old cabbage.
I know that general wine consumption has been shrinking, particularly for red wines. The fate of rosé doesn't need rose colored glasses: Production is growing and more than one in every 10 bottles consumed globally now is pink, with the popularity of premium, high-quality bottles unabating, especially members of Gen X and Gen Z.
CGA's 2023 Wine Insights Reports revealed that 21% of British consumers were drinking rosé more often than a year earlier. In May, the Santa Margherita wine brand unveiled a survey of 2,000 Americans nationwide, undertaken by Talker Research, that found rosé the favorite wine for celebrations.
Still, a caution: A lot of new, boring rosés are out there. My 14 picks below are not.
2021 Textura Pretexto Rosé ($19) : Founded in the Dão region of Portugal in 2018, this family wine project enlisted famed winemaker Luis Seabra to oversee its range of reds and whites. Now, it's added this fresh, juicy rosé made from red jaen grapes (called mencia in Spain). It's elegant, mineral and complex.
