Award-winning Pinks

With the summer heat kicking in, many will be looking for a wine that can be drunk nice and cold. A soothing glass of red wine during the cooler months is hard to beat, but when the warmer weather kicks in, there is nothing quite like a refreshing chilled glass of white or rosé wine.

Most people’s first thoughts would automatically lean towards a choice of white wines, but all around the world, wine drinkers are discovering the pleasures of rosé wine and starting to appreciate the subtleties of this most refreshing of wine styles.

Delicata winery garnered seven awards for five different rosé wines, all won within the last 14 months. The awards are: a silver medal at the 2015 International Challenge du Vin held in Bordeaux for the Classic Collection Rossini Rosé Syrah; a bronze medal at the 2015 Drinks Business Global Rosé Masters held in England for the Gozitan Victoria Heights Rosé Shiraz; a bronze medal at the 2015 International Wine & Spirit Competition and a Commendation at the 2015 International Wine Challenge, both held in London, for the Ġellewża Rosé Frizzante; a bronze medal at the 2014 International Challenge du Vin and a Commendation at the 2014 Decanter World Wine Awards held in Bordeaux and London respectively for the Medina Rosé Grenache; and a Commendation at the 2014 International Wine Challenge held in London for the Pjazza Regina Rosé blend of Syrah and Carignan.

Although rosé wines are available from all over the world, those produced around the shores of the Mediterranean enjoy great prestige and no more so the rosé wines of Malta, which have proved to be in a class of their own.

They are crisp, fruit-driven, remarkably refreshing, they have more longevity and flavour than most rosé wines and are extremely versatile, meaning they can be enjoyed with or without food.

Chilled rosé wines make the perfect pre-dinner aperitif or celebratory wine, but they serve as an equally great wine accompaniment to lighter-flavoured foods.

They are particularly good with fresh Maltese fish like paġell (red bream) and skorfna (rock fish) or other Maltese seafood specialities like pan-fried calamari, pasta with sea urchins or assorted shellfish platters, and especially fresh Mediterranean prawns.

Rosé wines also make the perfect picnic wine, as they go well with most salads and snacks. And they are much underrated and often overlooked when trying to find a wine partner for Asian dishes, especially the sweeter cuisines like Chinese and Malaysian and even some Thai dishes.

One of the most important things to be wary of, however, when buying rosé wines, is the vintage.

As a basic rule of thumb, for most of the world’s rosés, the younger the better. At this time of year you should be able to find rosé wines from the last 2014 vintage readily available – with the 2015 vintage becoming ready somewhere towards the end of the year, after the grapes are harvested in August.