Océane Rosé 2024 Review

Côtes de Provence does what it does, and does it very well.

Let us be honest about Provence rosé for a moment. It is one of the great marketing success stories of modern wine. Twenty years ago, Côtes de Provence was barely on the radar of serious drinkers. Today, those pale pink bottles with the elongated necks are on every rooftop bar, every holiday Instagram and every restaurant terrace where someone has decided the occasion calls for something summery and vaguely French. The cynics will tell you it's all style and no substance. The cynics are, mostly, wrong. The better bottles from the region are genuinely excellent. Dry, fresh, precise, and built for the sort of food and company that makes an afternoon last until dark.

Océane falls into the better bottles category with a degree of ease that is a little irritating when you've been hoping to find something to complain about. It comes from the Côtes de Provence appellation, the largest and most famous of Provence's three rosé producing zones, covering nearly 20,000 hectares of sun drenched hillside between Toulon and the Italian border. The 2024 vintage there was characterised by a wet spring followed by a hot, dry summer, conditions the region's winemakers handled with the practised confidence of people who have been dealing with Mediterranean weather for several thousand years. The result across the appellation is fresh aromatics, good concentration and better acidity than a hot year might lead you to expect.

Pale pink, with a barely there blush that Provence has made into something of a competitive sport. In the glass it smells like someone opened a window facing the sea.

The Océane is pale pink in a way that other pale pinks aspire to, almost translucent, with just enough colour to remind you it is wine and not a very convincing water. On the nose, white peach, orange blossom, a little grapefruit pith and something you could genuinely describe as a sea breeze without feeling embarrassed about it. The palate is concentrated and focused, with bright acidity that keeps everything lifted and a finish with more length than the modest price tag suggests it has any right to offer. It can sit in the cellar for four or five years if you feel like the exercise, though it is difficult to imagine a good reason to wait.

The bottle is elegant, the wine inside it is honestly made, and at $40 it costs less than a main course at half the restaurants you'd order it in. That's either a deal or a comment on restaurant pricing. Both, probably.

The Wine Scoffer drinks on principle. No samples were solicited. Opinions are entirely their own. — Scoffermag.au

RRP $40

FR | 2024 | Cotes de Provence | 13%