The archetypical Parisian wine waiter. These days he’d probably be serving rose. (0609578)
BACK in the 1960s, when restaurants such as the Steak and Stilton and Le Nautique were coming into their own in St Peter Port, there was one wine that outsold all the others. It wasn’t a French Beaujolais, it wasn’t a German Riesling, nor was it an Italian Chianti. It wasn’t even a white or a red.
Mass wine-drinking, helped on by the new super- and hypermarkets, was just about to take off and what we were all drinking by the gallon was Mateus Rose, a Portuguese pink wine which was nearly sparkling but not quite, what those in the know call ‘petillant’.
And it came in a very fancy bottle, too – so attractive, we all apparently thought, that virtually every household had a table lamp made out of one.
The lamps were naff in the extreme, the wine soon became pretty naff, too, and the boom soon turned into bust.
The appeal of Mateus Rose was its taste or, more to the point, the lack of any taste at all. I have a book on wine, published in 1966, by the celebrated wine writer, Hugh Johnson, whose World Atlas of Wine later became a classic.
Never a wine snob, Johnson nevertheless described Mateus Rose as a wine for ‘people who do not really like wine … an intermediate stage between childish fizzy drinks and an adult taste for wine’.
It was the beginning and the end of rose for decades to come, although wholesalers Randall’s says Mateus always retained some popularity in the island, especially with the Portuguese community.
Wine buffs believed that the pink wines of the Cotes de Provence region were fine on holiday in the south of France but not back home. Buying a bottle in an off-licence and expecting it to take you back to heady holiday heights simply didn’t work. The pinks of Anjou were equally ignored.
Suddenly, the fashion has changed. Rose wines are now definitely, well, in the pink. Sales in France have overtaken those of white for the first time, 22% against 18%. One in five bottles of wine sold in France is a home-grown rose compared with one in 10 a decade ago.
The pink revolution is happening in Guernsey, too. Aurelia Cormerais of Randall’s says that of its best-selling bottles, 2,000 are white (Trulli Pinot Grigio), 800 are pink (Blossom Hill Zinfandel) and 400 red (Ropiteau l’Emage Merlot).
In France, certainly, the new trend is a shot in the arm for its ailing wine industry and the only piece of good news for years.
Health campaigns and stricter French drink-drive laws have led to a huge reduction in sales – the French drink half the amount they did 50 years ago. Their young see wine and alcohol as old France and in their rejection of it are turning ever more to cannabis for relaxation.
In the Languedoc-Roussillon area, where over two decades nearly half the vineyards have closed down, there’ve been big demonstrations by wine-growers. Vineyard values in the region have dropped by 30% in four years as home consumption continues its slide. The strong euro isn’t helping exports to the UK and the United States either.
France now exports fewer bottles than Italy and Spain and was overtaken by Australia some years ago. In terms of export value, though, France still leads the field with a 35.5% share of the market compared with the New World’s 25%.
For part of the decline in their market modernisers within the French wine industry blame old-fashioned methods and a reluctance to change the way they label their bottles. This month new rules have been introduced which are designed to simplify what we see on labels.
Introduced by the French agriculture minister, Michel Barnier, with the direct approval of President Nicolas Sarkozy, the new rules will change the various categories of French wine and impose fewer restrictions on production methods.
‘French wine suffers from constraints that harm its competitiveness on the expanding worldwide market,’ Mr Barnier said. ‘It is complicated and often little-understood.’
Vin de table will now be called Vignoble Francais or Wine of France. Grape varieties such as merlot or chardonnay can be put on labels for all these wines.
Vin de pays will now be labelled Indication Geographique Protegee, meaning the wine is from a set geographical region. Appellation d’origine controlee wines will remain largely unchanged, except that they will now be called appellation d’origine protegee.
Although the new moves are seen as a revolution, many will still find French wine labels impossible to decipher. Regional identity, or terroir, in food and wine production is cherished by French people and doing away with a lot of it is facing a good deal of resistance.
Lovers of French fine wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy and the Champagne area have little to fear from the new rules as they don’t apply to the top end of the market.
One intriguing fact has come to light during enquiries I was making into the current drinking habits of Guernsey people. I asked Customs & Excise if it had a breakdown of figures to indicate precisely how much pink wine islanders were buying.
While figures aren’t compiled on the basis of wine colour, it was able to give me a monthly figure of how much sparkling wine including champagne is shipped into Guernsey.
Can anyone tell me why, in June last year, 11,000 bottles of sparkling wine were imported, whereas, in June this year, it was more than twice that number – 23,000?
Who’s been giving the parties, why weren’t we invited and was it pink champagne?
Coming up: rosé
BACK in the 1960s, when restaurants such as the Steak and Stilton and Le Nautique were coming into their own in St Peter Port, there was one wine that outsold all the others. It wasn’t a French Beaujolais, it wasn’t a German Riesling, nor was it an Italian Chianti. It wasn’t even a white or a red.
Mass wine-drinking, helped on by the new super- and hypermarkets, was just about to take off and what we were all drinking by the gallon was Mateus Rose, a Portuguese pink wine which was nearly sparkling but not quite, what those in the know call ‘petillant’.
And it came in a very fancy bottle, too – so attractive, we all apparently thought, that virtually every household had a table lamp made out of one.
The lamps were naff in the extreme, the wine soon became pretty naff, too, and the boom soon turned into bust.
The appeal of Mateus Rose was its taste or, more to the point, the lack of any taste at all. I have a book on wine, published in 1966, by the celebrated wine writer, Hugh Johnson, whose World Atlas of Wine later became a classic.
Never a wine snob, Johnson nevertheless described Mateus Rose as a wine for ‘people who do not really like wine … an intermediate stage between childish fizzy drinks and an adult taste for wine’.
It was the beginning and the end of rose for decades to come, although wholesalers Randall’s says Mateus always retained some popularity in the island, especially with the Portuguese community.
Wine buffs believed that the pink wines of the Cotes de Provence region were fine on holiday in the south of France but not back home. Buying a bottle in an off-licence and expecting it to take you back to heady holiday heights simply didn’t work. The pinks of Anjou were equally ignored.
Suddenly, the fashion has changed. Rose wines are now definitely, well, in the pink. Sales in France have overtaken those of white for the first time, 22% against 18%. One in five bottles of wine sold in France is a home-grown rose compared with one in 10 a decade ago.
The pink revolution is happening in Guernsey, too. Aurelia Cormerais of Randall’s says that of its best-selling bottles, 2,000 are white (Trulli Pinot Grigio), 800 are pink (Blossom Hill Zinfandel) and 400 red (Ropiteau l’Emage Merlot).
In France, certainly, the new trend is a shot in the arm for its ailing wine industry and the only piece of good news for years.
Health campaigns and stricter French drink-drive laws have led to a huge reduction in sales – the French drink half the amount they did 50 years ago. Their young see wine and alcohol as old France and in their rejection of it are turning ever more to cannabis for relaxation.
In the Languedoc-Roussillon area, where over two decades nearly half the vineyards have closed down, there’ve been big demonstrations by wine-growers. Vineyard values in the region have dropped by 30% in four years as home consumption continues its slide. The strong euro isn’t helping exports to the UK and the United States either.
France now exports fewer bottles than Italy and Spain and was overtaken by Australia some years ago. In terms of export value, though, France still leads the field with a 35.5% share of the market compared with the New World’s 25%.
For part of the decline in their market modernisers within the French wine industry blame old-fashioned methods and a reluctance to change the way they label their bottles. This month new rules have been introduced which are designed to simplify what we see on labels.
Introduced by the French agriculture minister, Michel Barnier, with the direct approval of President Nicolas Sarkozy, the new rules will change the various categories of French wine and impose fewer restrictions on production methods.
‘French wine suffers from constraints that harm its competitiveness on the expanding worldwide market,’ Mr Barnier said. ‘It is complicated and often little-understood.’
Vin de table will now be called Vignoble Francais or Wine of France. Grape varieties such as merlot or chardonnay can be put on labels for all these wines.
Vin de pays will now be labelled Indication Geographique Protegee, meaning the wine is from a set geographical region. Appellation d’origine controlee wines will remain largely unchanged, except that they will now be called appellation d’origine protegee.
Although the new moves are seen as a revolution, many will still find French wine labels impossible to decipher. Regional identity, or terroir, in food and wine production is cherished by French people and doing away with a lot of it is facing a good deal of resistance.
Lovers of French fine wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy and the Champagne area have little to fear from the new rules as they don’t apply to the top end of the market.
One intriguing fact has come to light during enquiries I was making into the current drinking habits of Guernsey people. I asked Customs & Excise if it had a breakdown of figures to indicate precisely how much pink wine islanders were buying.
While figures aren’t compiled on the basis of wine colour, it was able to give me a monthly figure of how much sparkling wine including champagne is shipped into Guernsey.
Can anyone tell me why, in June last year, 11,000 bottles of sparkling wine were imported, whereas, in June this year, it was more than twice that number – 23,000?
Who’s been giving the parties, why weren’t we invited and was it pink champagne?
Article posted on 26th July, 2008 - 9.00am