Chuntering Cherub launches world’s first ‘rosé blanche’

rosé colours
Pic: Pixabay

Famed Provence producer Chuntering Cherub has launched what it says is the future of pink wine, with the world’s first ‘rosé blanche’.

What people want

The estate’s owner, Claire Couleur, says that their Cuvée Anémique is the palest Provence rosé ever – and exactly what consumers are looking for.

‘If there’s one thing that modern drinkers hate in their rosé, it’s colour,’ she told Fake Booze. ‘Closely followed by flavour and structure. So we’ve worked incredibly hard to ensure there are as few of any of those elements in the wine as possible.’

Making wine that tasted like wine was, she said, ‘a trap that the industry had fallen into for far too long’.

Some traditionalists have called the wine a pale imitation of rosé, which Ms Couleur said was ‘the greatest complement we could hope for.’

Pink-stagram

Cuvée Anémique uses a unique production process, where the grapes are crushed and pressed, before the juice is ‘allowed to stand in the general vicinity of the skins for a couple of hours.’

With its lively ‘instagrammable’ label, the wine is described as being ‘even more fun to photograph than it is to drink’ and ‘better to share on social media than in the glass.’

Influencer @Wine4Days gave Anémique a resounding thumbs-up, saying it was ‘perfect for dancing around with in a mildly saucy fashion while wearing a bikini’.

Pale and interesting

Critics have said that the wine is ‘essentially white and should be labelled as such’, but Ms Couleur maintained that the Chuntering Cherub Rosé Blanche complied fully with the ‘approved south of France pantone’ chart, with an official colour of ‘discomfited polar bear’.

‘We were very careful to ensure that there is a definite rosy tinge to the wine,’ she said. ‘Though it’s admittedly not as in the pink as we expect our sales to be once this baby hits the market.’

The €30 price tag was, she said, ‘designed to appeal to anyone who values image and prestige ahead of less tangible concepts such as quality and tradition.’

Perfectly positioned

Restaurants and retailers agreed that the wine had a healthy future ahead of it.

‘Pretending that something is a rosé is definitely the best way to sell wine that isn’t very good,’ said Pierre Tire-Bouchon, sommelier at the Porky Mallard. ‘And if it’s illogically expensive as well, then so much the better.’

But not everyone was a fan. On Twitter, @winesocialist said that seeing producers relentlessly removing the colour from rosé was ‘like watching Americans and Europeans constructing a high school history syllabus.’

Click here to read about how a French supermarket pulled a range of rosés after finding fragments of flavour in the bottle; and here to read about the ‘apocalyptic’ shortage of pink prosecco

No posts to display