Provençal rosé is one of the world's most recognizable wines, but its rise was anything but inevitable.

This episode explores how rosé evolved from a low-status byproduct into a global luxury phenomenon. Caroline and Emily trace the history of pink wine from Antiquity to modern Provence, uncover the innovations that created today's pale rosé style, and examine how branding, celebrity culture, and lifestyle marketing transformed an inexpensive regional wine into an international success story.

Podcast Show Notes

In this episode:

• Why rosé was once considered a cheap byproduct
• How rosé was made in Ancient Greece
• The difference between traditional rosé and Provençal rosé
• The impact of phylloxera on French wine
• Marcel Ott's role in refining the modern style
• Why Provence became synonymous with rosé
• The rise of Whispering Angel
• Brad Pitt, Miraval, and celebrity wine brands
• The history of rosé piscine
• Why ice in rosé is more French than many people realize

Key Takeaways

• Rosé was historically a low-status wine.
• Modern Provence rosé is a relatively recent innovation.
• Marcel Ott helped transform rosé from a byproduct into a premium category.
• Celebrity culture played a major role in rosé's global success.
• Whispering Angel helped establish rosé as a luxury lifestyle product.
• Rosé piscine has deeper roots than many wine drinkers realize.
• Branding often contributes as much to rosé's value as winemaking.

Foreign.

Bonjour, Caroline.

Welcome to the Real Fishwives of Paris summer edition.

And as summer.

Summer babies, both of us, we are summer babies.

We're also both Americans living in France.

And most Americans come to France in the summer where they engage in vulgar, impolite behavior as tourists.

Yeah, there's.

I've witnessed.

You know what?

Let's be fair.

We've been here a long time, but in my early Paris days, I'm sure I did some ugly American things.

Screaming, mostly, talking way too loud, Way too loud.

We are just.

I can see us coming a mile away just because of the sheer volume we use.

It's.

It's impressive.

Honestly.

I can hear it too, and I think French people can as well.

But I can hear an American three cars down on the train.

Oh, yeah, it's definitely.

And other things that we do.

And I am guilty of this.

To this day, eight years in, I am still guilty.

I love ketchup.

I put ketchup.

If I get a steak frite, I'm getting ketchup for my frite.

I will say that I'm American.

Like, if they give me one tiny little, you know, crappy little metal tube of ketchup, I'm like, I need more than that.

I'm American.

Yeah.

And they're like, oh, you know, speaking of needing more of things, I always need more water.

In.

In France, they give you, like, a little tiny, like, shot glass for your water to have with your dinner.

And I'm like, I would like a large.

I would like a pint glass.

A pint glass.

And also a carafe of water for myself.

No, the thimble.

You mean the teeny, tiny thimble.

You don't see it that often anymore.

The, like, teeniest, tiniest thimbles, but sometimes they really do give you a glass that has about a thumb's volume of water.

And that's.

I mean that when you see another way, you recognize Americans walking around with status water bottles.

Oh, like the Stanley.

Stanley.

No, no, no.

I. Stanley's are absurd.

I don't.

Yeah, I don't.

I don't vibe with that either, but, yeah, they are.

They are a thing.

And I think.

And one of the other things that Americans tend to want to do is put ice in pretty much everything.

Well, it's hot in the summer.

We need ice in our liquids.

I don't know.

I don't like cold liquids that much.

I do.

I do.

We are an ice family.

I'm an ice chewer, too.

Much to my husband's dismay, But I do think ice is coming around a little bit.

But if you are American, you come to France and you order a glass of white wine and you ask for ice, they will tell you no.

Well, I mean, they love to tell you no.

When they think you're wrong, they're gonna tell you no.

And that is wrong.

The customer is always wrong in France.

Yes.

You know what?

I'm okay with that.

Oh, we like it that way.

Yeah.

If you want to be truly French, embrace the fact that you know less than the person selling you the thing.

Yeah, I think it's legit.

And the customer is usually wrong, honestly.

Yeah.

But one thing I think is kind of a weird entre deux is the idea of putting ice in.

And that is actually completely acceptable.

You know, it's even served with ice.

And so that's what we're gonna talk about today.

We're gonna talk about the kind of pale pink from Provence that is known and loved across the world.

The, as we call it.

And that is where it is not only acceptable, but actually just normal and served with ice.

So before we talk about.

Which is a slightly more modern development, potentially, because the world is warming, but that's another topic for every single day, talk about climate change.

Yeah, I feel like we do bring up climate change in every episode.

Good.

We should.

I mean, how can you not when we're talking about food and wine?

The world is on fire and wine is dying.

Grow things that grow.

The mushrooms will come.

Yeah, the mushrooms are going to take over, you guys.

This is our theory.

But before we had piscine, before we even had In Provence, we did already have pink or pinkish wines.

So the very idea of a pink wine, which just means, I mean, pinkish, pinky, it dates back to ancient Greece, but it wasn't the kind of we see today in ancient Greece, they were making that were basically made from a mix of red wine and white wine grapes.

So we're not looking at something as pale as a Provencal.

We're really looking at something that's going to more closely look like the clarets.

So these sort of lighter red wines that were really popular during the Middle Ages.

I just want to clarify that English people call Bordeaux claret today.

We are not talking about that.

No.

We're talking about CL A I R E T rather than C L A.

R E T Cl and that is still a wine, but that now Claret de D is the big one, which is a sparkling white wine.

It's so confusing.

Oh, my God.

So confusing.

So mixing Red wine grapes and white wine grapes.

To make a pink wine is not typically how is made today, is it?

No.

So today, and it's funny because people always joke about that.

They're like, oh, did they mix red and white wine?

Because they think it's so absurd.

But actually, that is how most rose champagne is made.

They just add a couple drops of pinot to the white blend.

But otherwise, that is really not how people are making.

Okay, so how do we.

What's the technique?

I know that it's.

In French we use this word which means to bleed.

It's essentially a byproduct of red wine.

So when we're making red wine, we want to concentrate the red and really make something that's robust and intense.

And so often what they will do is actually kind of, you know, gently press off an amount of juice that is being separated from the main blend, and that will basically allow the skins and the tannins to.

And the color that remains to have more surface area to wine, if that makes sense.

And so you get a richer red by actually removing some of that juice.

And that juice is a little bit pink because it did have some skin contact.

We pulled off this juice so that this red wine could be super concentrated.

And what are we going to do with this extra juice?

We're going to ferment it and turn it into pink wine and sell it cheaply.

Yeah.

And sometimes it.

It could be a little bit sweet, maybe it might have some residual sugar in it.

And that is the way that much has been made.

But it's not that popular.

It's darker than what we are used to now with these.

These wines.

And so it is something that you do still see, though, for sure.

Yeah, it really is, like, quite modern.

It dates to after the phylloxera crisis, which is something that we've talked about a lot on this podcast, where after France's grape growing regions were infested with this little tiny aphid called phylloxera, a lot of the winemaking kind of died off, had to be jump started, restarted.

And in a lot of regions, specifically in the south, where they were trying to kind of ramp up production to respond to demand, they were trying very hard to concentrate their wines a lot of the time by importing grapes from Algeria.

And so they were taking anything they could, making as robust and rich and condensed a wine as they could, they end up with this byproduct.

And that's kind of how we start in this style of.

Okay, so that's interesting.

So they basically, you know, we're talking about Rhone wines.

They're in Provence, they're in the south of France.

But this is the Rhone kind of blend, like Sanceau.

And so, yeah, Sanceau and Aramon were some of these grapes that they were sort of trying to concentrate down the flavors of.

Well, so like Sanso is.

It's a blender, it's a big.

It's a big volume producer.

And like, you know, post phylloxera, it really is about bringing up volume.

And in a region that can't command amazing prices, if you have to sell your wine for cheap, you might as well sell a lot of it.

And so these are wines that are cheap.

They're cheap, they're not particularly highly valued.

Again, they might be a little bit sweet.

And they're not really probably going anywhere beyond their local region either.

Right.

And so for to become the sort of crazy on trend marvel that it is today, it takes, well, it takes a village, but it does take one man.

Marcel Othe.

This story is also.

We hear this over and over again.

Like, one person can really transform an entire region by figuring out how to make good wine and marketed.

It's not just about making it, it's about marketing it.

If you take a region that is unsung and you make something that's good and you figure out how to sell it, everybody else is like, huh, okay, we can do that too.

Yeah.

And so that's exactly what happens with and for that to happen.

I think it's very appropriate considering the.

The way that we think of today.

It happened in Provence, obviously.

Where else could it happen?

And it was at the hands of a man called Marcel Ott A O T T, which doesn't sound like a very Provencal name if you're in Provence.

The names sound kind of Italian.

Ot sounds very German.

And Marcel OT was indeed from Alsace, so on the Franco German border.

But he fell in love with Provence.

How could you not fall in love with Provence?

It is very beautiful.

I mean, the reason, I don't know if I've shared this on the podcast yet, but the reason that I live in France is not because I found Paris.

It's because I found Provence.

I mean, Americans also have a long love affair with Provence.

We love Provence.

And there are too many of us down there, that's for sure.

It's true.

It's true.

There's also too many of us in Paris.

We're everywhere.

We are like ants.

We are.

And we talk loud.

Screaming ants.

Screaming ants.

Ah, yes, that is us.

He moved down there, and he immediately started to work not in wines, but actually in white wines.

I feel like most people don't even know that Provence makes other wine that is not.

But, like, the majority of the wine, until pretty recently was red and white.

And the white blends down there can be awesome.

It's hot.

You know, you're blending with a lot of different grapes.

There's a lot of Vermentino.

There's a lot of, like, Grenache Blanc.

There's a lot of random little grapes.

I mean, this is where the list goes on, you know.

Bourboulon.

Yeah.

Is that how you say it?

Bourboulon?

I think so.

Isn't there some sweet white as well?

Like some Muscat and.

For sure, yeah, there would be some Musca.

I mean, there's.

But there's just a lot of different white grapes, and they tend to be quite aromatic.

There's probably some Viognier for sure at this point, although that wouldn't have been in the past.

But, you know, they're making wines that tend to be.

That vary in style.

So there are some that are going to be more minerally, some that are going to be richer.

And then a lot of the ones that are, you know, kind of marketable today are floral, they're fruity, they're in a sort of more modern style, but they still have plenty of booze.

Because it's hot.

Yeah, it's.

They get a ton of sunshine, so they get fully ripe.

So you get these, like, big, bold.

You know, it's not a.

It's not your crisp, flinty white wine from the north of France.

But it's funny that Marcel Haute would be working on whites, because, of course, if he's from Alsace, that's what he knows.

Of course.

And I think one thing that's interesting about this, too, is, you know, when we think about wine in a modern context, we often think about the winemaker, but historically, a lot of wine would have been made by cooperative, and so that was true in Provence as well.

And Marcel Haute actually became one of the first, right around the time of World War I, in the region to bottle his own white wine.

Okay.

Which, I mean, he's doing right around the same time as the Rothschilds are doing this in Poyac.

So interesting.

Poek Poie.

Pok Poc.

I thought so.

Double L's, double L's or a Y.

So once he'd kind of mastered the white wine area, and he was happy with his white wines.

Then he started to think to himself, why are our pink wines here so shitty?

I mean, it's.

It's interesting that people like that.

They just want to make it better.

Yeah, they just want to.

They just want to make it better.

And they.

And they believe in the area, and they.

They love the product.

And that is radical.

And that is something that is hard to do as cooperative, I think.

Yeah.

Because you're dealing with a lot of different interests, and people mostly just don't care.

They just want to sell their juice, you know?

And I think it sometimes does take a foreigner, like, I mean, at this period of time, someone like ut really would have been perceived as a foreigner in Provence, because even though he's French, he's from a completely different region.

He probably speaks a completely different dialect.

In Provence, we're still going to be speaking Provencal.

In Alsace, we're still going to be speaking Alsatian.

I mean, he would have spoken French.

I'm not going to try and put him in a little corner, but he would have been a foreigner coming in, looking around, seeing what's beautiful and what's amazing about the area that he moved to and then seeking to improve it.

And I think that we see that a lot throughout history, across all regions, before we get into exactly what he invented and what his pioneering methods were.

You've already described to us the Sagnier method.

What is the method that's going to make Provencal rose?

Well, so the way that Provencal rose is made, which is so different from what we had seen before, and really from how it's made everywhere else, is that they are taking red grapes and treating them like white grapes.

And so when we make white wine, we take the grapes, we press them, and we ferment the juice.

When we make red wine, we take the grapes, we crush them, and we let the gunk and the juice sit together.

That pulls out color and it pulls out tannins, and then we press it.

So for rose, we are taking red grapes and we are pressing them and we're making wine.

And for the most part, they're really not leaving skin contact at all.

Maybe just for half an hour, just a little bit or not at all, you know, and a little bit of color will bleed out.

I mean, you see some that are almost white, just a tiniest tinge of blush.

And so that is a really radical departure from how we were treating red grapes.

You know, it's sort of saying actually that's not the only thing that we can get from these red grapes.

And it's interesting that this developed in a place where a lot of the native grapes were not necessarily, like, super colorful, like Sanceau.

Yeah.

And so what Ott is then going to do is take this technique, take the same sort of calculated, quality seeking mindset that he brought to white winemaking, and really select the best Grenache, the best Sanceau, the best Cabernet Sauvign, and transform them into wines that are no longer just a byproduct.

It's no longer just like, what are we going to do with leftovers?

It's we're going to seek to make these wines as delicious as we can.

That's funny.

So you just said Cabernet Sauvignon.

I was like, are you sure?

And we googled it because Cabernet Sauvignon is from Bordeaux.

So I was like, really?

But okay, it is allowed.

But yeah, you know, Grenache surrounds or veggre.

That's gsm, that's classic.

And then we have Sanceau, Carignan, and, you know, and other grapes.

So it is interesting.

You can have Cab in Provencal.

Rosie.

I don't think there's that much of it, though.

I think you're right.

I think it is a lot of the GSM blend.

But I think also again, when we talk about the Flockster crisis, like we have all of these grapes that kind of become dis.

That's a French word.

Unrooted.

What were you going to say?

Disenracinated.

Disinracinated.

Uprooted.

Uprooted, yeah.

That's not a word in English.

That's not a word of Eng.

That's funny.

Yeah, they.

Well, they get moved around.

I mean, even like Sancerre being Sauvignon Blanc.

Sancerre was.

Was Pinot before Phylloxera.

But Sauvignon.

Yeah.

Sauvignon Blanc is also from Bordeaux because Sauvignon Blanc was more resistant to fluxer.

Yeah.

So modern wine world really is post World War II, y'.

All.

Whether Ott actually deserves the credit for inventing this style is unclear, but I think what he does deserve the credit for is refining it and turning it into something sought after.

It is still Domaine d' Hote is expensive.

It is still sought after.

It also has a fancy bottle.

Like, often you will be served water in a carafe in an old, odd bottle.

Oh, fancy.

They do play with bottle shapes a lot in Provence.

They have fun with that.

And it is still for sure one of the most famous Provencal roses.

But the real fame here comes later.

The real popularity of is honestly a 21st century.

And the idea of celebrities in Cannes and in Saint Tropez.

Like, that was a.

A vibe, right?

And so in this time, we see two wineries that basically get a ton of investment in order to develop this style that is becoming very marketable.

But like, these celebrities are falling in love with it when they're in France at this point.

It's just hasn't really become super popular anywhere else.

Well, yeah, because in the States at this point, if you get pink wine of any kind, it's typically going to still be that sweet spot.

Stuff like that was something that I remember.

White Zendel, white Zinfandel.

Right.

So when you come to the south of France and suddenly pink wine is pale in color and it's dry and it's sexy and so sexy.

It's fun because you're in Saint Tropez, you're on cocaine, you're Lindsay Lohan, you're having fun.

So the rise of celebrity is also in conjunction with two really famous domains being purchased and revitalized and renovated.

Esclon.

Chateau Desclan was a historic property owned by one of the counts of Provence.

This is a big deal winery.

But, you know, like many wineries, it happens.

It's sort of fallen into disrepair.

He pumps a shit ton of money into this place, and there they see the opportunity to really do something that nobody has really done before and create a rose brand or a French wine brand in general for the Anglophone market.

And they have Whispering Angel.

We've all had it.

We've all seen it.

It is beautiful.

Whispering angel is a product that is a good wine.

It is technically correct.

They're making.

Technically correct.

Technically correct.

You sound so French right now.

But it is, it's a correct wine.

Okay.

Like, it's funny.

Like, my husband's such a wine stuff.

He's like, like, they make a lot of it.

Okay.

It's a.

It's a commercial product, but it's a good wine.

It's well made.

There's a lot of technology that has to go into a well made because you need a lot of temperature control.

It has to be super clean.

This is all stainless steel.

This is all temperature control.

There's money in developing this style, too.

So Whispering angel is this beautiful packaging.

It's sexy.

They also were the first people to really make large formats because they understand Lindsay Lohan's crew needs a Jeroboam.

And I was actually pouring it at a nightclub once called Gilgamesh in London to Baby Spice was.

That was there.

And she was really sweet.

Just so everyone knows, Baby Spice was.

Always my favorite Spice Girl.

I dressed as her for Halloween when I was 12.

That's very cute.

I hope you had a wig.

Did she have a wig?

I didn't.

Okay, then you can't be Baby Spice.

I know.

I was Baby Spice too, but I have the bag.

You look more like Baby Spice.

Yeah, it's true.

But she was super, super nice.

And that was just like a formative moment in my career.

It's like serving magnums of rose.

Baby Spice.

And it was nightclub wine.

It was.

It was made to be served on beach clubs in large formats.

It's sexy.

It's in English.

I mean, the audacity of making an English brand white.

Whispering angel, like, Whispering angel, you know, they just nailed it.

And it's so ubiquitous now.

It's expensive, and it's taking something that is not that expensive generally, and making it premium through the branding and through the distribution.

So that was really a big shift.

I would say that that was the first celebrity owned by celebrities.

This was the beginning of celebrities buying wineries.

And even if other celebrities had in the past, I think Sting has had a winery for a really long time.

I know pink makes wine.

Like, it's definitely a thing.

Kylie Minogue has a wine brand.

Pink actually makes wine, though.

Cameron Diaz has a wine brand.

But, oh, yeah, the.

Like, it's.

It's like clean wine.

Exactly.

Major scare quotes.

Clean wine.

No, we don't.

We should do an episode about that.

Oh, yeah, we should.

What is clean wine?

Nothing.

But Miraval was.

Was a moment.

It was also, like, the height of Brangelina's popularity.

You know, now we all know Brad Pitt, but the.

The actual, like, sale of Miraval, I think only recently went through to, like.

Yeah, they.

It was a big part of their divorce.

Okay.

Was that Estate.

But, you know, this was a moment where rose was so hot and everybody wanted it.

And they.

And they're basically now able to charge €30 a bottle for something that was like €5.

And the reality is, if you today in France buy a bottle of Whispering angel and compare it to something that is €8, you know, whispering angels, probably 30 to 8, they're kind of the same juice.

But this is where branding, I think, is so interesting, because you said.

And I think this is like, so apt.

You know, this is when really comes into its own and when it becomes really popular.

But the major asterisk there should be on the global scale.

On the global scale, or even on the French.

On the.

On the French generalization scale.

Because in Provence, this style is already quite popular by the 50s and 60s.

Okay, interesting.

Which is where our idea of the piscine comes in.

Okay, tell me about it.

Okay.

So basically, we have this style of wine that's starting to be made around, you know, the.

The turn of the 20th century, but it's not really going to travel outside of the region that much.

You're going to drink it when you're in Provence.

If you are one of the people who travels to Provence, you'll drink it.

But bearing in mind that most French people who traveled to Provence didn't do it in the summer, they did it in the winter.

Oh, really?

Yeah, to, like, escape the cold.

To escape the cold and to take, like, the sea air, you know, it was good for your consumption.

I mean.

Yeah.

And it took until F. Scott Fitzgerald started coming down or started going down to the south.

I'm not currently in the south.

God, I wish I were.

Yeah.

We should record next time.

From the south, outside.

Yes.

Beach noises take me to the south.

But F. Scott Fitzgerald and all his crew went down to the south in the summer, and that started this trend of going to Provence in the summer.

Until then, it was sort of a winter retreat.

Oh, interesting.

And so.

But we do have a couple of French movie stars who head there in the 50s and 60s, notably Brigitte Bardot.

We don't need to dive into it deeply right now, but she is not a feminist and we don't like her.

Brigitte Bardot has a lot of opinions.

She is.

We'll talk about this at some point.

She's the reason we don't eat very much horse in France anymore.

But she's also not tragedy.

Not.

Not a.

Not a fan of women's causes.

Yeah.

But back in the day, she was extremely instrumental in bringing about this trend of putting ice cubes in your wine.

Well, let's also remember that a lot of this wine is mass produced and it is not that good.

Right.

And the colder your wine is, the less that matters.

Right, the less that matters.

And also it's hot.

You know, like, you don't want, like room temperature or hot rose or white wine.

Honestly, for that matter.

Like, that is not the vibe.

Well, it also dilutes it a little bit.

So if you're drinking and remember that, I mean, even when we're in Provence, which is hot, so we do have a high potential for alcohol, roses are not going to be 14, 15 degrees.

We're looking at like 11, 12 typically.

What's that one?

Ah, I bet it's a bit more than that.

This one probably is, but this one's a little bit of a different.

No, this is ten and a half.

Ten and a half.

Okay, but.

But basically in the 50s and 60s, people like Brigitte Bardot, Roger Vadim are going to start putting ice not just in their rose, but actually in their champagne.

And it means that you can drink more because it's diluted and it means that you can drink it when it's hot out.

Yeah, because you don't want to get dehydrated.

Right.

You know, that's important.

And if you only have a little tiny French water glass, you're going to get dehydrated unless you put ice in your wine.

Why don't they drink water?

They may think it makes them rust.

Also, there's no public toilets here.

You think it makes them rust?

That's what I've heard.

So one thing I would just like to say about.

So piscine means swimming pool, right?

Yes.

And that's also these, like, glasses, these big glasses that you shovel in ice cubes and your water.

Yeah, they're giant.

They're kind of like the kind of glass that you might get.

Like a.

Like a frozen daiquiri.

Like an apparel.

Yes, like an apparel spritz, please.

So that is the pool.

When you were saying Rosie Piscine.

We're talking about the swimming pool of a glass.

Okay, okay.

Rather than being by the pool, although you are probably by the pool.

Please don't use glass by or in a pool, you guys.

It's really dangerous.

And if it breaks, you have to clean the whole pool out.

You have to drain the pool and clean it.

So no glass in or around the pool.

Okay.

Please.

This has been a public service announcement.

I am in favor of.

Of ice in.

Me too.

The thing that I'm not in favor of is made to be diluted with ice, which is a relatively new trend that we're seeing on the French landscape right now.

We have a bottle with us of a wine called Rose Epicine.

I have never seen this before.

It's actually pretty easy to find.

So it's got a screw cap.

Okay.

Which is not necessarily a bad sign these days.

Not a bad sign, but controversial in France.

Controversial in France.

Rare.

It's got, you know, this light blue, stripey kind of motif that makes you think of Provence and the Cote d', Azur, the blue coast.

And it has a little sticker in the corner that says, absolutment avec des glacent.

Absolutely.

With ice cubes.

You are not meant to drink this sans ice.

Interesting.

And the reason for that is that it is quite sweet.

He has this sort of come to, you know, the eureka moment, the apple falling on his head, as it were.

There's a lot of money in this category.

Oh, yeah.

But no, that's not the story he tells.

Anyway.

He tells a story that he was watching.

He was in the Cote d'.

Azur.

He was watching two women drinking with ice in a cafe.

And he thought to himself, oh, that's such a great idea, and I'll have the same.

And when he drank it, he found that it was too bland.

And so he thought, how can I make the more flavorful so that it won't be bland with ice?

I'm sorry, can we just put it out there that the entire purpose of this style of is to be bland.

This is wine that tastes like nothing.

And that's why it's good.

Exactly.

It's easy sipping.

It's for.

It's like the same thing that makes you want to drink an ice cold Heineken at, like a barbecue.

It's like, you know, it's flavorless cold.

Liquid that will get you a little drunk.

It's perfect.

The whole purpose in life.

That's it.

That's all.

That's all you're looking for.

But he decided that that wasn't what he was looking for.

So he wanted a very aromatic rose and something that he claims has no added sugar in it.

Although I've drunk this before and it is very, very sweet.

Okay.

But I will say it's a bit of a mystery as to what's in it now.

And it's not from Provence.

It's Made in the Southwest.

The Southwest.

That is not Provence.

It is not Provence.

Provence is the Southeast.

Yes.

So it's made near Toulouse, but it looks like it's.

It's the right color.

It is the right color.

Misleading.

Yes.

Interesting.

So what's interesting about this as well is that one thing that I find most Americans find a little disconcerting when they're shopping for wine in France is that the grapes usually aren't on the bottle.

Yeah.

So that's not what matters.

It's not what matters.

I mean, so my favorite analogy for this is, you know, when you walk into a restaurant and you are like.

You know, your waiter comes and you're like, I will have the beef.

And he's like, okay, but do you want the steak tartare or the beef bourguignon?

They both have beef in them.

They're very, very different recipes.

And it would be odd to be like, oh, just the beef.

I just like beef.

You're like, okay, but you need to actually pick a beef.

Do you want a burger or.

Right.

And so in France, we think of wine the same way, where it's like, yeah, okay, you like, you know, Merlot.

But do you want it in this blend from this region, or do you want it in this blend with this terroir?

I only drink Petrus.

Oh, well, aren't you fancy?

I wish that were true.

I mean, that's just.

Just, you know, we'll get a bottle.

Of Petrus one day for this podcast.

Oh, please, someone give us a bottle of Petrus, please.

We can't afford it.

So what's.

But what's interesting is that often, even if the grapes aren't on the bottle, if you do, like, five seconds of Googling, you can find out what grapes were in the bottle, if that matters to you.

This one is a trade secret, so we don't know what's in it.

Except we know there's a little bit of Negrete.

Negrete.

I bet it changes all the time.

I bet it is probably highly adjusted in different ways, too, because it's a commercial product.

And look, that's not the kind of wine I choose to drink.

But if you love it, I don't care.

Do what you want.

I mean, that's the thing is personal taste.

Every time anybody asks me, oh, what should we do with this?

What should we do with that?

Do what?

I mean, don't.

Don't.

Don't up anybody else's experience.

Right.

Don't carve cheese out on the common cheese board.

Don't mix sugar into everybody else's wine.

But if you decide that the only way that you can drink wine is by mixing it with Sprite, do it in your own glass and put a straw in it and have fun.

Don't do it around me.

But it's fine.

I don't know.

I don't care.

I could do it.

Well, no, I can't anymore because I'm 38.

But when I was 23, I could drink a gallimacho, which is red wine, and Coca Cola.

That'll keep you up all night.

I could vibe with sangria.

Yeah, Sangria is nice.

Yeah.

It's acceptable.

Yeah.

So this is another one of these sort of sweet wine.

But they claim.

So the claim.

So it was.

He claims that there is no sugar in it.

Maybe that's true.

It must be.

It's easy enough to do.

It tastes pretty peachy.

It's easy enough to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Does it have fruit juice in it?

No.

Okay.

No, it's just grape.

As far as we know.

It just has grape juice in it.

It's easy enough to.

To make it not fully fermented, to make it sweet.

That's not.

Not difficult.

But yeah, this is a style that is actually become more popular.

So people like Moet and Veuve and Freshenay, all these sparkling wines are making that you're supposed to put ice in.

Yep.

Which is.

But again, this is wine for marketing sake, not wine for people who like wine.

No.

It's such a party.

So I got invited.

It's such a party wine.

I got invited to an event that Veuve Clicquot held on the top of the Printemps department store.

You have too much money.

And it was like.

I mean, they do, but that's.

It's such a vibe.

Right.

So I went to this thing, Rooftop.

They're releasing their brand new sweet sort of summer wine meant to be drunk with ice.

They serve it in those piscine glasses.

Oh, my God.

Each one has an ice cube that.

Like a perfectly spherical ice cube with a flower in it.

And it's quite sweet.

And I have to say, I used to be a pretty big tank when it came to drinking half a glass of this stuff.

And not only was I already drunk, I was also already kind of hungover.

Oh, it's just so sweet.

The sugar doesn't make you feel good.

Yeah, the sugar doesn't make you feel good, that's for sure.

Well.

And it's funny Because I say I've never seen this before.

But I'm also not the target market.

I'm not buying my wine at the grocery store.

I'm.

If I were gonna buy rose, I would buy from something that was Appalachian.

I would buy a.

Or, I mean, maybe not, but like an igp.

I would buy something that was from Provence.

Yeah.

And I would probably buy something from a brand that I'm already familiar with for the most part.

How much is it?

So this bottle's like €5.

I would probably spend a little more than that.

I'd probably spend more like 10.

Yeah, yeah.

But I mean, for years.

So every single summer, I go back to Cannes because that was my first port of entry.

Well, my first port of entry.

Port of re.

Entry.

When I moved to France for good was Cannes.

I love it there.

I go with a friend of mine, and every year we have picnics on the beach.

And we started out, because we were in our early 20s, buying, you know, grocery store rose, which was quite good.

Probably €3.50.

It was probably fine.

It was probably fine.

Now we've graduated to Bandol, which is, you know, that's very nice.

Very nice.

But you can get it again at monopri for, like, €10.

It's.

It's quite good.

Rose Provencal Rose does not have to be expensive at all to be good.

And a lot of the time when it is really expensive, you're paying for marketing.

Right.

Yeah.

So a product like this is popular, I would say, mostly for parties.

Like, it's not something that you buy to, like, have around your house.

You buy it because you're having people over for a picnic, you having people over for a barbecue, a pool party, and you're going to open a bunch of this.

But it is very, very popular in Brazil.

That's funny.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So in Brazil, this is.

This Rose Piscine brand is the number one imported wine from France.

That's wild.

But when you think about how hot Brazil is, that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I guess also in a culture which isn't a wine culture, but has, you know, caipirinhas and, like, sweet cocktails, it makes sense that this would be popular.

So in France, when you're make.

When you're saying the words rose episcine, what's basically happened with this particular bottle and this particular brand is that someone has had the brilliant idea of taking something that people are already saying and turning it into a brand.

So this bottle says Rose Piscine on it.

But when most French people think about having a piscine, they're not saying, I want the brand rose Episine.

They're saying, I want the, the drink, the cocktail rose Piscine.

I want.

I want a cheap Provencal rose in a glass with ice.

And so with that in mind, what, to your mind are the best roses to buy to turn into a piscine?

Just something.

Yeah.

Cheap and pale.

Right.

And from Provence.

So that could be the aop, Cote de Provence, that could be igp, Mediterrane.

I would definitely get something from Provence.

You don't have to spend a lot of money on it.

I wouldn't do that with something that was €30, like a Miraval or a Whispering angel or even some of the nicer ones that, you know that Arthur sells, like the, the Sainte Marguerites, like we.

He has some nice ones.

Really?

Yeah.

I mean, anything could be, even between 5 and €10 would be fine, you know.

Yeah.

Just pale, I would say.

Yeah, yeah.

Because that's the other thing to bear in mind is obviously this pale style of is on trend right now.

It comes from Provence, but a lot of regions like Languedoc that used to make darker are now making.

Voluntarily making lighter.

I would say that that would be a safe bet too.

The Languedoc might be a little cheaper too, but they are making this style and it should be fine.

You know, my husband is a wine merchant.

The problem with Rose is that he has to buy a lot of it every year.

Every year they do this like big Rosie tasting where they taste like 100 roses to choose the, you know, 30 that they'll carry.

And like, it's boring.

This is not an exciting tasting.

It's basically going through a bunch of cheap acid water to find the best cheap acid water.

And.

And they do get some really nice ones that are not just cheap ass water, but you get what I mean.

They're tasting a lot of wine that basically tastes exactly the same and then he has to buy a bunch of it.

And if it's not sold by September, you can't keep it.

It's not getting better.

All it will do is basically kind of turn vegetal and weird and lose any freshness.

So he has to buy a lot of it and hope that it's a hot summer and that people will buy it, because if they, they're not.

If it doesn't go in the foie, which is like the big wine sale in September, there's nothing he could do with it.

So Support your local wine merchant.

Buy rose.

Yeah, buy rose in the summer.

They bought all of that and they need to sell it.

So it's, It's.

It's something that is, I think, annoying, but also good.

I mean, you know, it makes money in the summer.

Yeah.

But the rest of the year, almost entirely not.

People do not drink rose in February.

Well, Arthur's not the only Frenchman to kind of denigrate.

There is a French journal journalist, Fred Hermel, who thinks that is basically a sign of the end times.

And he says that it's like a sign of the Americanization of French society, which is just.

For some French people, that is the worst insult that they can give people is to say that it's a sign of Americanism.

I mean, I'm sorry.

French people love McDonald's.

I know they like it more than we do.

I mean, the McDonald's here is better than it is these days.

I like McDonald's too.

Here, but that's funny.

Yeah, I mean, fair enough.

Like, whatever.

I mean, a lot of French people don't.

Don't drink that much anymore, and they don't even care about wine.

Like, most French people only know about their local wine if they're in Paris.

They might know about, you know, the big wines a little bit, if they care.

Yeah, they don't know any more about wine than we do.

No, I think that what the.

I think the French are really, really good at pretending to have a lot of authority on things and having.

And that.

And having strong opinions, regardless of whether they actually know that.

Know the subject that deeply.

Go to our Instagram comments to find French men being angry with us for being experts in the subject.

I know.

And the thing is, I kind of respect that.

That, like, audacious, like, just.

I will have an opinion if it kills me.

I hate it.

I do not respect that.

The fact that a French person can just believe so wholeheartedly that their way is the right way.

I think that there's something sometimes like the fake it till you make it mindset that if you just are like, yeah, yes, this is the way.

I hate it.

I don't know.

No, I've never had that problem because I'm a narcissist and I think I know everything, but I'm not faking it.

I believe that that's the difference.

See, maybe that's the thing.

I just.

I'm faking it.

But I would like.

I would like to believe.

I would like to have an ounce of the, you know, the self belief that, like, Your average French man has.

I mean, honestly, it's not even just Frenchman.

It's a white man.

That's fair.

I have a mug that I actually gave to friend of the podcast, Carla, the.

Our Chef.

Oh, yeah.

That says, carry yourself with the mediocrity of a white man.

The.

With the.

Wait.

With the confidence of the mediocre white man.

Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre.

To carry yourself with a mediocre.

No, carry yourself with mediocrity.

Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man.

Amazing.

Yeah, Excellent.

So ros in general is actually.

So speaking of mediocrity.

Speaking of mediocrity.

No.

So rose episine is definitely something that French people drink, whether it's the piscine brand or just with ice in it.

That, being said, in general, might be something that is becoming harder to find in coming years.

Well, as we mentioned at the top of this episode, climate change is a big one.

Not only actually do we have fires down there now, which was not a thing before, but as everything gets hotter, the hardest thing to do is going to be to keep freshness, which is what we like about these wines.

You know, the hotter it is, the more sugar there is in the grape, the less acidity there is.

We can make adjustments for that.

We can add acidity, but it's not really ideal.

It's not really what we want to be doing for a quality wine.

So it's going to be harder and harder to make fresh wines in general across the board.

And you see whites and roses, the alcohol level climbing up a lot, and then all you have is.

Is alcohol, and it's kind of.

It.

When a rose is too boozy, this style of.

Is too boozy, it.

It just becomes almost greasy, and it doesn't really have much flavor, just tastes kind of glycolic, you know, and that's.

Where maybe you really do need the ice.

Yeah, you really.

You need to dilute it.

Right.

I mean, even add some, like, sparkling water, maybe just to keep it fresh, but more just in completely other territory then.

Yeah.

So, I mean, there is a specialized lab in the VAL that has found this definitely happening.

Although it's not surprising to anybody who spends any time thinking about these sort of issues that, you know, if temperatures are climbing exactly the sorts of things that you talked about are going to be happening to these wines.

So all the more reason to support your local wine merchant this summer.

Drink, drink, buy now, because in 10 years, we don't know what it's going.

To look like 10 years.

We'll all be mushrooms.

We will all be mushrooms.

Mushroom zombies.

I still haven't seen the last of us.

But, people, I haven't seen it either.

It's okay.

We.

We don't have TVs.

No, it's a lie.

I do have a TV, but we can't watch all the same stuff the Americans watch.

Because I don't have the same, like, stuff on streaming.

Yeah.

On that note, because it's summer, you shouldn't be watching TV anyway.

Get outside, get some rose, put it in a large glass, shove some ice cubes in it, and enjoy your Rose de pistine.

And keep it away from the pool.

Keep it away from the pool.

Glass and pools don't mix.

Merci, Caroline.

And Abiento.

Au revoir.