Chateau d’Esclans Esclans Rosé 2008 (Provence, France)

by Gareth Groves

Everyone loves rosé, especially when it is sunny. And there are so many styles around, from syrupy Californian numbers that taste like boiled sweets to the wonderfully alliterative posh, pale Provencal numbers. You can go cheap (and quite possibly nasty) or you can splash the cash on a £70 bottle.

Can you really spend £70 on rosé? Amazingly, yes, you can.

Chateau d’Esclans, a fantastic property with what my colleague Omar describes as an insanely grand house near La Motte (the granny flat has five bedrooms), make a wine called Garrus from 80 year old Grenache and Rolle vines. We sell it for £70 a pop. Is it any good? I haven’t the faintest idea – the sample must have got lost in the post. Jancis Robinson likes it though, giving it 18 out of 20 and a drinking window up to 2013 whilst comparing to a white Burgundy. Must be alright then. I’ll probably never know.

Anyway, today’s wine of the week is not the Garrus but its younger sibling, the Esclans bottling from the same property. It comes in at a far more reasonable £17.51 which whilst still being at the top end for most pink wines is about the same as Domaine Tempier’s much admired Bandol Rosé and a lot less than people pay for the likes of Domaine Ott. It is also brilliant – pale, delicate and crisp with lifted crushed berry fruit and a hint of something wild and herby. I rather think some poached salmon with some lightly pickled cucumber on the side would go rather well. A summer lunch fit for a king.

The chateau itself is owned by Sacha Lichine, son of the writer and vigneron Alexis and until 1999 the proprietor of Margaux’s Chateau Prieuré-Lichine. Since 1999, Sacha has been busy building up Domaines Sacha Lichine with d’Esclans as the jewel in the crown. One suspects a number of his top customers spend a goodly part of the year swigging Garrus whilst cavorting with supermodels on yachts down the road in Cannes or Monte Carlo. And why the hell not? If I was rich enough I’d be doing exactly the same. I never seem to do enough cavorting.

You can find out more about our wine of the week and the whole glamorous tale of the chateau on d’Esclans rather flash website (the source of the rather lovely photo at the top of this post. I do love a bit of dappled shade – perfect for rosé sipping, I always think.)

Tags: Chateau d'Esclans, France, Grenache, Provence, Rose, wine of the week

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 5th, 2010 at 10:29 am and is filed under Bibendum Blog, Featured Wines, Food & Wine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.