Wines to capture the taste of summer

Light reds, rosés and orange wines made by both romantics and pragmatists

Theopetra Estate Xinonmavro Rosé, Meteora, Greece 2022 (£21.75, corkingwines.co.uk) Wine producers tend to divide into two temperamental camps. The first, cussedly idealistic type doesn’t think very much about who’s going to buy their wine until it’s time to sell it – they make what they damn well please and only then hope to find customers who share their enthusiasm. The second group is rather more pragmatic: they research potential customers in fine detail before they so much as plant a vine, and everything they do in the vineyard and cellar is in service to what they think the market demands. When it comes to most rosé wine, it looks very much like the second camp is in charge: retailer wine ranges are increasingly filled with dozens of very pale pinks either from, or copying the wildly successful model perfected in, Provence. Maybe the rosé drinking public is getting what the rosé-drinking public wants, but my goodness it makes for some dull wines at times, a sea of indistinguishable pale ordinariness in which pink wines of personality, such as Theopetra’s outstanding mandarin-orange-tingling, rippling, ripely stone-fruited Greek rosé, stand out like beacons in a safe harbour.

Gerard Bertrand Orange Gold, IGP Pays d’Oc, France 2021 (from £19, ocado.com; hedonism.co.uk) While I reckon the majority of the most memorable wines I’ve had in my life have been made by producers operating at the “wine-first” end of the spectrum, I dare say I drink more wines made by pragmatists. And there’s something to be said for a producer who can spot a trend developed by less obviously commercially minded peers and bring it to a wider audience. The South of France is home to a number of impresarios of the palatable mass market, and it’s no surprise that big names such as Jean-Claude Mas and Gerard Bertrand have in recent years added examples of the trendy cult “orange” wine style to their multimillion-bottle vinous empires. Both Bertrand’s seriously stylish Orange Gold, with its gentle tannic bite, spice and exotic fruit, and Mas’s brightly peachy Arrogant Frog Organic Orange 2023 (coming to independent merchants in the UK this summer with an rrp of £13.50) are deliciously drinkable alternatives to me-too rosé – as, indeed, is Advini’s gently apricoty bargain Gros Manseng Vin Orange, Vin de France 2022 (£8.25, Asda).