On the continent and in the UK, Rosé d’Anjou hit the spot charming everyone who tasted it during the sixties and seventies.
On the local scene, in sleepy Malta, it’s coming of belated fame, especially with novice wine drinkers. Its asset of course is that this medium-dry rosé proves that wine doesn’t always have to be individual to drink.
Rosé d’Anjou is best described as a sweetish pink wine for people who do not really like wine, a drink to put up with when switching from drinking childish fizzy drinks to an adult taste for wine – or is that how wine writer Hugh Johnson describes the appeal of that other blush wine called Mateus Rosé?
In any case, Rosé d’Anjou is an easy-drinking wine, particularly recommended for elderly ladies and teenage girls’ first alcoholic chunders, although I have a feeling its customer base may turn out to be a little broader than that.
Although popular enough, it’s one of those wines that is just wine. It would be silly to think there’s anything to say about it other than that some drinkers deem it fit for purpose. Silly or superfluous, indeed, were it not that the purpose I see for Rosé d’Anjou is not the same as the reason why its consumers drink it.
I regard Rosé d’Anjou as the Honda Civic of the wine world: a decent first car for any road-bound first-time driver, cheap to acquire and easy to drive, a fuel saver and economical to insure.
Some might say a Honda Civic is a poor excuse for a car. Well, the analogy holds in that Rosé d’Anjou is often little more than an apologetic wine. This Day-Glo pink may not look like much but you’ll have to admit that at least it gets you going.
I like Rosé d’Anjou, not to drink myself, but because it’s wine fit for the purpose of widening the wine market, to initiate new drinkers and make them comfortable trying many other wines that are more befitting. It gets people new to wine on the road to far more interesting places and their wines.
Until the day sommeliers relegate it off wine lists, I shall love Rosé d’Anjou as long as it means that more people will eventually trade up and come to appreciate the BMW, Audi and Mercedes’ of pink wines, some of which are crafted with love and passion here at home, in Malta and Gozo.
Tasting Note (25.8.2014 G.M.)
Selection Rosé d’Anjou – Champteloup , 2013, 12.5% Vol.
variety: Grolleau and Cabernet Franc
style: off-dry pink wine
region: AOC Anjou Rosé
producer: Château De Champteloup
Georges’ Score: C
It’s correctly made and off-dry instead of wholesale sweet at least. Actually one of the better examples but need I say more?