Pink Pinotage sweeps all before it

The Pink Pinotage bandwagon sweeps all before it.

In today's Daily Telegraph (UK) there's a page of wines selected for what their wine writer Jonathan Ray calls "the capricious season that we call an English summer."

He lists four pink wines, "two still and two sparkling - that deserve a special mention with summer in mind." And half of them are Pinotages -- Flagstone's 2006 Semaphore Rosé and Simonsig's Brut Rosé NV fizz. (The Telegraoh says NV, but in fact the wine is vintage 2005, tho' the year is not very clear)

Who'd have thunk it?

Pink Pinotage

Pink wine is now fashionable thanks, apparently, to US rappers taking a fancy to expensive Rose Champagnes. Now us men can at last feel comfortablewith a glass of pink.


And Pinotage makes a great, brightly coloured, pink. Its naturally sweet mouthfeel means wine makers can produce a dry wine that tastes good on its own and slips down easily on a hot summers day.

WoSA organised a pink wine tasting stand at the London International Wine & Spirit Fair this year and I was pleased to see August Pepe was staffing it. August is the welcoming face in Delheim's tasting cellar and leads the winery tours. And it is appropriate Delheim was represented as they were one of the first Cape exponents of pink wines and the pioneer of pink Pinotage, making their first one in 1976.

August's stand was covered in pink bottles and I noticed Pinotages from Swartland Winery, L'Avenir and of course Delheim.

"So what do you think of the Delheim Rose, August?" I ask.

He takes a mouthful and ponders.

"Excellent -- it is the best!", is his verdict.