Category — News

Today, the Telegraph recommended a French Rose from Shewsbury based Tanners. Here’s what was said about the Tanners French Rose NV:

“A little gem… fresh and fruity …perfect fare for late summer picnics”

It’s currently available at Tanners here at £6.50 a bottle

I mentioned last month about European Commission plans to allow the mixing of red and white wines to make Rosé. Well in a brief article in The Telegraph its reported that those plans have been dropped.

Quite right too in my opinion.

Mark Dixon owns 40% of the outsourced office company Regus that operates around the world. Dixon, who is from Essex and used to be a burger-flipper is now a very rich man who is developing an interest in rosé wine.

A couple of years ago he bought the Chateua de Berne vineyard in Provence and he is now of the leading producers of Cotes de Provence rosé. The Cotes de Provence wine region is a large area that covers the Cote d’Azur from Marseille to Nice in southern France – an area that enjoys a Mediterranean climate. Three-quarters of the wine produced in Provence is rosé.

The vineyard Dixon owns produces around 600,000 bottles of wine a year with again, the majority being rosé.

The Rosé wine producers from Provence are up in arms with Brussels bureacrats over plans to make Rosé wine by simply mixing red and white wine.

The producers say the noble tradition of allowing the white juice of red grapes to sit on the skins just long enough is the only way to create the pink hue. A draft UE plan being put to final vote next month would allow the blending of reds and whites to produce rosé. In such cases, the mix is about 95% white wine with a dash of red. Critics call this pink wine.

I’ll let you the result of the vote next month.