Pale rosé isn't better – and nine other pink wine myths debunked

Red wine gives you headaches; white wine tastes of nothing, unless it’s sauvignon blanc; all Aussie wines are fruit bombs; the world will end if the flow of prosecco falters – the world of wine is full of ridiculous prejudices. Yet no style gets discriminated against quite like rosé. It’s all sweet, we’re told, or it’s only for women, or for summer, or for women in summer …

For a long time, rosé was disregarded because good winemakers didn’t make it: star California winemaker Rajat Parr, who was a San Francisco sommelier in the 1990s, once said: “No one cared about it, no one thought about it, no one drank it.” That, thank goodness, has changed – yet the prejudices remain. So let’s bust a few persistent myths.

Related: In the pink: why rosé is the drink for this summer | Fiona Beckett on wine

Rosé is a new trend

The ancients were probably drinking pink when Julius Caesar was knee-high to a grasshopper. In ancient Greece and Rome, white and red grapes would often have been crushed together, by foot, and the contact of the juice with red grapeskins would have meant that most wine was some version of red. Since the rules of classical civilisation held that all wine must be diluted with water – only barbarians drank it straight – a lot of that juice would have wound up a shade of pink.

You make rosé by blending red and white wine

In ancient times, essentially yes, since, as noted, all the grapes were mixed together. These days we do things a little differently. There are two ways to make rosé now: the saignée method and skin contact. The former involves bleeding off some juice after red grapes have been pressed: that juice becomes a lightly tinted wine, while what is left becomes a more concentrated red. Skin contact, or maceration, involves leaving the juice and its skins and pulp all mulched together for a time (hours, usually) so that some of the flavour and colour from the solid matter seeps into the wine.

Rosé should be cheap

Rosé certainly can be cheap, but anyone who has ever drunk vintage pink champagne knows that isn’t always the case. In Provence, Sasha Lichine set out to create a really premium rosé and succeeded: he sells millions of bottles of his Whispering Angel, at about £18 each. That’s his budget option: the gorgeous Les Clans won’t leave you much change from £50. Far from being the also-ran option for those without the know-how or the talent to make white or red, rosé is “the most difficult colour I’ve ever had to make good,” says Lichine. Also costing about £18 is Domaine Tempier rosé, from the prestigious Bandol appellation, which is credited with first showing the world how great rosé can be. I have seen Domaine Tempier’s co-founder Lulu Peyraud knock back a glass as if it were water, and she’s 101 and counting. If Bandol rosé holds the secret to eternal life, then £18 seems pretty reasonable.

The paler the pink, the better the wine

Absolutely not. This myth probably arose because the wines of Provence, which range in colour from apricot to salmon, are so admired. And rightly so: when good, they are herbaceous and saline and dangerously drinkable. But colour isn’t an indicator of quality – in fact, as pale rosé has become more popular, some winemakers have prioritised shade to such an extent they have ended up with a kind of alcoholic water.

Related: Think pink! How rosé became the booze of choice for millennials

All rosé is sweet

Ugh, no. You’re probably thinking of Mateus rosé. Or zinfandel blush. The former is a bubblegum-pink Portuguese wine that was hugely popular in the 1970s and 80s – around the same time as the Austrians were getting into trouble for sweetening their wine with antifreeze. Anything would taste good after that. Zinfandel blush is an American wine originally made by the Sutter Home winery in California but best known here for the bright pink Blossom Hill version. The best rosé, such as Chivite’s Las Fincas Rosado, is dry and aromatic and elegant; it goes beautifully with food. It is also rather nice without food.

You should only drink it in summer

Rosé certainly goes well with sunshine – and the Provençal kind makes a marvellous combination with tomato salads, artichokes or other summer delicacies. But I drink rosé all year round, and it brings a little summer glint to grey winter days.

It’s only for aperitifs

There are wondrous rosé aperitifs; they are so wondrous you can keep drinking them throughout the meal. The only wine aperitifs that don’t work with food are those, such as muscadet, that are too delicate to compete with any strong flavours. This is not how good rosé does business.

It’s only for women

Anyone who divides the contents of their bar along gender lines deserves to be consigned to drink water for ever. Good rosé is for people who like good wine. If you are of legal drinking age and in possession of a couple of tastebuds, it is for you.

Related: The cult of natural wine – 'this is like punk or acid house'

It’s only made in the south of France

Oooh, no. These days, rosé is made almost everywhere, from South Africa to Australia, and most countries can thrust forward some good examples, although France makes more – and more of the best – than anywhere else. But French rosé spreads far beyond Provence. There are rosés d’Anjou in the Loire, and wonderful pink pinots (such as those made by Sylvain Pataille as Fleur de Pinot) in Burgundy. One of my all-time favourite rosé regions (and it is an appellation, highly unusually, that only applies to rosé) is Tavel, a delicious, raspberry-coloured (and raspberry-flavoured) wine from the eponymous village in the southern Rhône – just across the river from Châteauneuf du Pape. (They don’t make rosé, although one of the most famous CDP producers, the Perrin family, produces the excellent and phenomenally successful Miraval, better known as Brangelina’s wine.) Good tavel is fabulous; mediocre tavel is living off the wine’s centuries of glory, when Louis XIV graced it with his favour and Balzac, the world’s most caffeinated writer, would put down his beloved coffee cup for a glass of it. As recently as last century, the great gourmand AJ Liebling declared it the only rosé worth drinking. Try Domaine de la Mordorée and you may come to agree with him.

It is less complicated than red or white wine

I would like to say yes to this one – but it’s probably, not, no. You can make it from many different grapes, although grenache is the most widely acceptable. You can make it in different ways, as we have seen. You can create a blush style or a rich red, and you can make red grapes in a white wine manner and name it Gris de Gris, as Ksara does in Lebanon, or make a white from your pinot grapes, which will often turn out pink, as Albourne does in West Sussex.