A dreamy, hypnotic rosé

2007 Château Pontet Bagatelle, La Rosée de Bagatelle, Coteaux d’Aix en Provence, France

Matthew Jukes
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published
in Features

2007 Chteau Pontet Bagatelle, La Rose de Bagatelle, Coteaux d'Aix en Provence, France (£7.95, From vineyardsdirect.com ).

I tasted a load of southern French ross the other day and was rather appalled by what I found. Dirty wines, 2007 vintage wines that were browning already, wines that smelled drainsy, wines that smelled fishy, high acid, low acid and even sweet wines! It was a real mess.

I am very particular about ros and if the nose and/or colour are off in any way you will never get me to like the wine. With more ros than ever being consumed in the UK there are more terrible wines than ever crowding our shelves.

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So when this utterly stunning wine turned up, with its palest of pale pink colour and unavoidably hypnotic aroma, I was transfixed. Misreading the label in a rush to get to my laptop to type it up for you, I initially wrote the name as La Ros de Bagatelle, but on closer inspection I saw that the name was, in fact, La Rose The Dew! I loved it even more.

This is the first wine made by Garry and Sabine Stephen (Aussie, former London-based banker) in their newfound life as vignerons. A Grenache-based stunner, with only 10% Syrah to make up the numbers, this is a dreamy wine and it makes others look dull and lifeless, particularly at this price. You may even like to know that magnums are available at £16.45 now that's a big bottle of dew!

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year

Matthew Jukes
Matthew Jukes

Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.  

Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.

He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.

Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’.  He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner. 

Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy.  His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.

 

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