Brokenwood Rosato 2021

You say tomayto, I say tomahto… You say rosé, I say rosato, let’s call the whole thing off!

We’ve all just started to get the hang of this rosé bizzo after many years of roaming the many-hued wilderness of wine shop fridges. Dark purple, bright pink, almost puce, violently violet, all the vibrant bottles staring out, but which one to choose? So many colours! There were many variations on the theme of pink but the one thing we didn’t want was a sweet wine. Was it that the more purple – the purpler? – the wine was, the sweeter it was? It was so confusing, with some dark coloured wines dry and some pale wines sweet and no way of telling without cracking the cap. Aaaargh!

Then came the seemingly overnight invasion of pale Provence rosé (it took over forty years but that’s another story) that taught us yes, the paler these rosés, the drier they were. And then winemakers everywhere began to follow suit, so that the casual wine buyer could actually be sure of a dry rosé no matter its provenance if the colour was right. Light bulb moment! Alas some of our favourite darker-toned rosés – from Bandol and Abruzzo for example – are suffering from lack of popularity now because of this swing towards ‘pale and interesting’ but as sure as night turns into day these will have their time in the sun again. One day.

Meanwhile, the new vintage Brokenwood Rosato is another good drop from the reliably delicious Hunter Valley winery and is more than a match for our Provence friends’ offerings. Made from a blend of nebbiolo, sangiovese (hence rosato, the Italian name for rosé) and tempranillo grapes – with a portion foot stomped, old skool style – it’s suitably pale pink in colour and a luscious, fruit-forward and fresh wine that is begging for a sunny day and fancy goblet of prawn cocktail: lettuce, marie-rose sauce and all.

The wine is bone dry but has so much love going on: rose petal fragrance and watermelon, with red cherries and exotic aromatic spice on the nose, and the palate is alive and bursting with berried fruit, texture and juiciness. It has freshness from the acidity – the Sangiovese component makes sure of that – and an almost chalky element that entices you to have another sip. And then another. It’s delicious, it’s smashable and it’s spring-ready!