Château Galoupet

(2025) This luxuriously packaged high-end rosé comes sealed with wax in a beautiful embossed bottle. It is a serious wine in a way, it's winemaking in both French oak barrels and steel, aged on the lees with bâttonage for the barrel-fermented component, ensuring some longevity. The blend is 45% Grenache, with 18% Rolle, 20% Syrah and 17% Tibouren - a Provence native variety that the estate says is its 'signature variety'. The dark brown glass of the bottle will protect against light-strike, but the wine is a pale and pretty colour. Oak is not obvious on the nose, other than a creamy sheen of almond or light vanilla over small red berry fruit. The mouth has texture, lovely fruit and some spice, perhaps a touch of spicy oak tannin adding an extra dimension. Perfect balance in an impressive, if expensive wine.

Light salmon pink, silver hues. Subtle notes of red forest berries, a hint of strawberries, peach and fresh orange zest, a mineral touch. Powerful, juicy, a refined fruit sweetness, ripe yellow apple, a well-integrated acidity, with a dark minerality, good length, nice ageing potential, full-bodied with a salty finish.