Nyetimber Rosé, Sussex, England NV (£31.49, Waitrose) Consuming pink champagne on Valentine’s Day is, I realise, hardly probably the most spontaneous or unique act of affection. It's the drink the Valentine’s trade tells us we will’t do with out – a automobile for the wine enterprise to prey on our insecurities and carve out a chunk of that profitable territory held by florists and greetings card corporations. Effectively, cynicism be damned: of all of the daft fabricated traditions on this daftest and most commercialised of festive events, pink champagne is the one I’m happiest to indulge. It is a type that has improved past measure previously 20 years. Winemakers have been treating it rather more critically than they used to, and making much more of it, too (right now rosé accounts for 10% of all champagne manufacturing; it was a mere 2% in 2000). One thing comparable has occurred on this facet of the channel, too: English fizz makers are mastering wines with the sensual pink tint and, in Nyetimber’s impeccable case, beautiful tumbling purple fruit flavours.
Domaine Julien Sunier Wild Soul Beaujolais Villages 2020 (bbr.com; robersonwine.com) Different seductive pink glowing wines to appeal the one you love tomorrow embrace the pillow-soft, fragrant, mellifluous (and mellifluously named) Fuchs & Hase Pet Nat Rosé from Austria (£20.40, peckhamcellars.co.uk); the punchy herby cherry-berry Co-op Cava Rosado Brut NV (£6.95, The Co-op) and the plump, satin-textured and tropically fruit-fragrant Ruinart Rosé Champagne NV (£69, jeroboams.co.uk). Do purple glowing wines rely? Few would fail to be gained over by the straightforward pure appeal of Casa Belfi Rosso Bio Frizzante, which comes from Prosecco nation, is made within the conventional approach the place the wine re-ferments within the bottle, and which has a delicate supple food-friendly cherry crunch and chunk. For these on the lookout for a Valentine’s with out bubbles, in France the Valentine’s trade would push you in direction of a bottle from a selected village in Beaujolais: St-Amour. Domaine Billards 2019 (£15.99) is a vivid, berry-filled delight. However, whereas it could not have the loving title on the label, Domaine Julien Sunier’s Beaujolais-Villages bottling has an actual silky, slinky attract.
Style the Distinction Gewürztraminer, Alsace, France (£9, Sainsbury’s) Can a wine be horny? The time period does get used relatively quite a bit within the wine-selling and wine-writing world, though usually it’s as a cold, blokeish time period of appreciation, relatively than one thing extra apparently kinky. However some wines actually do have a sure x-rated je ne sais quoi. There's, for instance, one thing very horny about actually nice pinot noir reds from Burgundy. That has quite a bit to do with their sheer silk-sheeted texture. But it surely’s additionally in the best way these wines, particularly older wines, have one thing elusively animal of their perfume, which provides them the identical type of mysterious, elemental pull that you just discover in actually good, handmade French fragrance. One thing comparable occurs with Alsace’s gewürztraminer. When it’s younger, it’s all about heady, dizzying rose-petal fragrance, as you discover in Sainsbury’s very enticing bottling. Strive a mature bottle from an incredible producer resembling Zind-Humbrecht or Marcel Deiss, nonetheless, and also you’ll end up having an entire different, extra grownup multi-sensory expertise.
Comply with David Williams on Twitter @Daveydaibach
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