A Life in Rosé

By Chris Bearman

I must admit that I’ve never been a big fan of rosé wine. I’ve tasted hundreds of Californian and Australian rosés and they have all been insipid and uninspiring. Poured from the fridge and something of a party wine, I have always felt that they are a wine for people who don’t like wine (as we have music for people who don’t like music and 20/20 cricket for people who don’t like cricket). When it came to visiting the Tavel wine region of the Rhone Valley in France (where they only make rose wine) I put my hand up to drive, so that Jane could drink, thinking that I wouldn’t be missing much.

Tavel is in the Southern Rhone valley about 15km north west of Avignon, on the west side of the Rhone River. It is only a small region (with just 25 producers) and the vineyards are all located around the lovely old stone town of Tavel. With Edith Piaff’s wonderfully evocative French music as a backdrop we drove the short distance to enjoy La Vie en Rosé. After negotiating the narrow old streets of the town, we parked and went to Caveau St Vincent. Caveau means cellar or underground storage vault but they are often wine stores and places to taste wine. Caveau St Vincent is in a lovely old stone building and sells all of the wines made in Tavel. The owner, Jeremiah, is a noble, dynamic man with long grey hair. He passionately explained all about Tavel wine, the grapes, the growing conditions, how it is made and the style of wines, repeatedly sweeping his grey hair out of his eyes with quick gestures as he talked.

Tavel is one of the Grand Cru regions of the Rhone Valley. In the Rhone Valley Grand Cru refers to the commune (village or town) rather than the vineyard or the winery as it does in other parts of France. Everyone in the commune (who is part of the appellation) has to obey very strict rules that seek to maintain the quality of the wines. These rules govern what grapes are grown, how they are grown, the yield of the vineyards and what options there are for solving problems. In the Tavel region, the main grapes are Grenache, Cinsault, Syrah and Mourvèdre. There are three types of terroir in Tavel: river sand, river stones and limestone. Generally, the stones give more minerality to the wine. If you see the stones in the vineyard you can expect a big structure. The sand gives more harmony and balance.

Rosé wine is made by keeping the skins of the red grapes in contact with the juice for a short period of time, so that some of the flavour, tannins and colour are extracted. Tavel wine is a generally more tannic than other rosés. There is no tradition of using oak in Tavel, so the tannins in the wine come from the skins of the grapes. Tavel wines range from light to dark depending on how much contact the juice has had with the skins. Jeremiah explained that “rosé wine is generally very acidic, but never in Tavel. It’s more balanced because it’s top quality. It is a Grand Cru. You may or may not like a Grand Cru, but it is top quality.” In Tavel, the wines must have a minimum alcohol content of 11% and can be as high 14.5%. In all we talked for about an hour, after which it was lunchtime, and he politely ushered us out of the store without asking us or even giving us a chance to buy anything.

In most of rural France, where the emphasis is on quality of life, everything closes at 12pm and doesn’t reopen until 2pm. So, Jane and I went to the local café for lunch. The owner, a jovial, slightly rotund man in his early 30s warmly welcomed us to his café with a beaming smile. As he attended to us the owner chatted to a couple of customers sitting at the bar, effortlessly mixing English and French in alternative sentences. To take our order he pulled up a chair and sat down with us at our table. After a week of rich food and wine, we thought we would go for the healthy option and ordered the house salad. The owner looked at us thoughtfully and said, “chips go really well with that.” He brushed aside our protests “, that really, that was enough food,” and said “I’ll give you a plate of chips with that.” (which he gave us for free).

We ordered the house wine to go with the salad. When in France we always order the house wine, which is always a local wine made by friends of the café owner and almost always excellent. In Tavel, the house wine is of course rosé and I thought I’d try it just for once, without any expectation that I would like it. I almost did a double take when I tasted the wine. The wine was bursting with rich warm strawberry and rhubarb flavours, set with a floral and mineral background. Wow, this was amazing and so unlike any rosé that I’d ever tasted before, that I could hardly believe it was a rosé wine. I asked the owner if this was a Tavel wine, and he confirmed that it was.

After lunch, when everything had reopened, we had a pleasant stroll along the narrow roads to Domaine de la Morderee (the Woodcock). Domaine de la Morderee is run by Madeleine and Ambre, daughters of Christophe and Francis who founded the winery in 1986. We tasted two wines. La Reine des Bois (the Queen of the Woods) and La Dame Rousse (the Red-Haired Lady). Both were excellent. La Dame Rousse had lovely rich fruit flavours of strawberry, cranberry and rhubarb with herbs and minerals. La Reine des Bois was an elegant wine, with a good structure and flavours of strawberry, and cranberry with a floral minerality. My opinions about rosé wine were rapidly changing. This was good, and consistently so across different wines and wineries.

We decided to stay in Tavel and return to the café. By this time it had turned into a local’s bar, with the whole town sitting inside the café and outside on the patio. The locals were relaxing after a hard day’s work in the vineyards and cellars, drinking beer or coffee and smoking cigarettes. Not a single wine was in evidence though. We sat at a table outside and ordered a light snack and a glass of wine. Around us the locals circulated around, talking excitedly with much animation, laughing, boisterously greeting friends and catching up on the day’s gossip. As they weaved passed our table people smiled and nodded, welcoming us, even though we were strangers and couldn’t speak much French. People who were still working drove passed in vans, throwing longing glances at the happy society on the patio who had finished work for the day, the other eye no doubt on the oncoming traffic tearing through the narrow streets between the parked cars. As I sat on the patio in the warm evening, with the stone buildings fading into darkness around me, I reflected on how much my attitude to rosé wine had changed that day because of both the extraordinary wine made in Tavel and the warmth and friendliness of the people of the town, who truly had La Vie en Rosé.

© Chris Bearman (2025). Wine Rambler Magazine.