Experiencing Rose and a stimulating conversation
In the week I went to a wine tasting on non Provençal roses. Roses account for 11% of all wine sold in the UK. It’s an interesting case study on how wine tastes change.
In the 70s and 80s it was unfashionable with consumers and unrated by the wine critics. Its introduction to the UK came through the visiting GIs who liked and missed the Californian sweet pink Grenache.
80% of the roses are made now by Italy, Spain, Italy and the USA. Yet the one I enjoyed the most was the Alpha Estate Florian Rose located in Amyndeon. North West Greece.
The grape is Xinamavro and the winemaker Angeles Ianodes who makes the superb Noussa red.
His rose had a rich opulent quality with a long finish.
We tasted 7 roses in all, including a fine one grown on the Hush Heath Estate in Kent. Like most English wines this was pricey at £ 16.50. English wine is increasing in volume and acclaim, the Camel Sparkling wine from Cornwall regularly beats champagne marques in competition but the big buyers like the Supermarkets will not acquire and promote it.
The volume of rose told upon my neighbour, a young lady of 26 who was friendly but a confident self-possessed person.
She was on my immediate left and to my right were 3 female geophysicists from Crawley, roughly the same age as my neighbour but of higher intelligence.
To my surprise the person to my left – Clarissa – asked one of them if she was an atheist.
This provoked a conversation one rarely has these days, namely on religion, and was made the more interesting by one of the Crawley group being Italian describing the prominent role Catholicism and the Vatican play in Italian life to the extent that if you have not been baptised you can experience all sorts of unforeseen problems.
Clarissa was anti-capitalist, reflecting the support that Jeremy Corbyn enjoys, and spoke grandly of the failure of capitalism.
I was tempted to remind her of Stalin’s reforms, accounting for 36 million lives, and Mao Tse Tong, 30 million though still with his statue in Tinnaman Square.
I did comment upon the quality of the conversation in times when texting, Instagram etc is all.
Clarissa spends 3 hours a day on Facebook and other social media to which I replied I don’t spend one hour a year on it precisely because I prefer communication to be through conversations like these.
It’s testament to roses and that the fine pink wine can generate such a stimulating conversation between 5 people who had never met before and may never do so again.
