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It's all coming up rosés in the heat
Our changing climate is forcing us to find new ways to enjoy a drink while dealing with the threat posed by dehydration
THE recent hot weather raises the question of what we can safely drink. As a diuretic, alcohol contributes to dehydration, a serious health risk in hot weather. (The same is true of caffeine in coffee). Should we turn to non-alcoholic drinks, to beer, white wines with lower alcohol, to cocktails or, following recent fashion, to rosé wines? Or, as is popular in France (and becoming so here), should we try chilled red wine made from lighter grapes like gamay or cabernet franc?
In a temperate climate, it is possible to drink similar wines all year round. However, we seem to be experiencing not just warmer summers, but more extreme weather conditions. These include periods of intense summer heat, interspersed with violent storms.
Given these climatic changes, reds with intense fruit flavours and alcohol strengths of 13 per cent or more are not only too heavy but also inappropriate with the food that goes best in these weather conditions.
This challenges the logic of mass-produced wines, squeezing all the fruitiness that can be got out of the grapes and, simultaneously, bumping up the alcohol content.
Two questions arise. Firstly, have the large producers who supply the multiples miscalculated? Secondly, if many wines currently available at discounted prices are inappropriate, what should replace them?
The answers to these questions attack the conventional view of bulk wines. If we are now to experience two months of each year in Mediterranean or semi-tropical heat, the last thing we want is the increased risk of dehydration from wines with alcohol levels almost rivalling spirits.
Of course, most spirits can be mixed with soft drinks or fruit juice to reduce the alcohol content for a given quantity of liquid. But the same is not true with wine. In France, wine is a family drink and can be diluted with water for children, while purists this side of the Channel would recoil at the idea!
The obvious response is lighter whites. If few of us have a very clear idea of white wine, should we perhaps turn to rosé?
The problem here is that many British wine drinkers expect little of white wine and even less of rosé.
At a recent tasting of an 11 per cent Rosé d’Anjou three of the six tasting panel members (all male) described it as “girly” but were reluctant to explain precisely what they meant by this.
Since women now buy two out of every three bottles of wine sold in supermarkets, this seems a dangerously outdated view. The other three tasters described it as “natural and very acceptable”.
There was a time when ‘serious’ drinkers would only consider the deep pink Tavel Rosé from Côtes du Rhone, closer to a red than most modern rosés.
Fifteen to 20 years ago, for many British drinkers, the only rosé wines they knew were Portugal’s Mateus Rosé (still the world’s biggest selling rosé) and France’s Rosé d’Anjou.
More recently, a new generation of rosé wines has become available which have little to do with this style of wine.
This transitional situation offers the opportunity to rediscover beer. Many local pubs have been reluctant to stock cask-conditioned ales because they see little prospect of selling a complete barrel before it deteriorates. To some extent, bottle-conditioned ales address this problem because the beer matures while sealed in the bottle, reducing the quantities pubs need to stock.
More generally, CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale) have provided an infrastructure of education, information and support for pub conservation and the protection of traditional brewing, which should soon start making inroads into the bland indifference of the large breweries.
On a more modest scale, they have introduced one-third pint glasses, which enables drinkers to sample beers within both their price range and their ability to hold their drink.
The remaining option, cocktails, deserves a future column of its own. But if you want a refreshing, non-alcoholic drink, try lemonade (or ginger beer) with ice, squeezed fresh limejuice, six shakes of Angostura bitters (don’t be timid here) and half a dozen fresh mint leaves. Delicious! |
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