A FEW good days, a rush of sun to the head, and with all the practice we had last year life can be switched from near subterranean to Mediterranean in the time it takes cheats to press the ignite button on the barbecue. Out come the luscious salads with great olive oils and superior vinegars. Out comes the adventurously marinated fish or chicken for the grill. Out we come ourselves, munching fat olives and sun dried tomatoes in a pale (but getting better) imitation of our gutsy Provencal cousins. The one thing that is missing in this sunny picture is rose.
Poor old rose has had such a bad image for such a long time that you are more than likely turning up your nose in disapproval even as you read this sentence. I blame Britain's Princess Margaret, whose passionate involvement with Mateus Rose back in the early 1960s inspired a lot of people to try this sweetish Portuguese version and move swiftly on. To be fair to Mags, the market was also flooded with a good many rather sickly rose's from the Loire and blush Zinfandels from California - all of which tended to reinforce the view that pink wine couldn't possibly be serious. Long before drinks like Woodies and Two Dogs had appeared on the offlicence shelves, rose had moved off them - doomed by the very fact that it was seen as a sort of pink alcoholic lemonade.
All somewhat tragic, on several counts. For one thing, there are heaps of delectable rose's - from Provence, the Rhone, Languedoc Roussillon and some parts of the much maligned Loire as well as Spain and, very occasionally, the New World. More to the point right now, rose is the ultimate summer drink - pretty in the glass, fruity yet dry and brilliantly refreshing, especially when you are very hot and it is very cold.
Because it's generally fairly inexpensive, it's a wiser choice for alfresco situations than top quality reds or whites whose subtle properties sun and wind can so easily dissipate. But the virtues of rose go further than that. "The most impressive thing about it is that it goes so well with so many summer foods," says Colm Brangan, a Dublin wine importer so convinced of rose's undervalued merits that he has no fewer than 18 handpicked pinks on his list. "Olive oil, vinegar, olives, anchovies, all sorts of erudite's and salads, barbecued chicken, fish, even lamb ... It goes much better with tangy flavours than most white or red wines."
"Garlic, peppers, leeks, aubergines..." our own John McKenna continues zest fully. "It's just superb with them all and nothing else slakes your thirst so pleasurably on a hot day." Though you might venture a glass as an aperitif, rose is essentially a wine to drink with food rather than one to guzzle on its own all afternoon.
AS a closet lover of rose for the past few years, I'm delighted to see signs of a reversal of its fortunes. In Dublin recently, Jean-Marie Peyraud of Domaine Tempier, source of one of the most splendid rose's of them all, said the fashion for drinking pink has taken off to such an extent in Provence itself (where, let's face it, it has never exactly been out of fashion) that producers can no longer meet local demand.
Closer to home, brunch time tomorrow - Bloomsday - sees the launch of a month long rose fest in Dublin's new wine bar, Le Vigneron in Temple Bar. Wine consultant Redmond O'Hanlon has devised a list of 20 quality French rose's which the Vigneron's French chef will partner with a whole series of interesting dishes. "Rose's spend their lives in a wine limbo from which we hope to rescue them," he says.
"We are convinced they make far more interesting marriages with a far wider range of dishes than either white or red wines. We hope that by July 16th many Irish wine drinkers will be astonished by their range, complexity and food compatibility - and be less snooty about them." His decision to feature 20 is important - record beating, even. Currently, San Francisco's fashionable restaurant Rumpus, with 18, claims to offer the most extensive list of rose's in the world.
So think pink. Whether you go to Le Vigneron or not, search hard in your local wine shop for a youthful bottle to keep in the fridge for the next scorcher. Taste, with that plateful of summery, salady food, and see whether you don't agree that from now on, everything in the garden should be rose.