The pinks are booming.

Today's Daily Telegraph devotes half a page to rosé wine; not bad coverage with all that's going on around. But I expect they felt they needed to add something cheerful. And what's more cheerful than the idea of a nice glass of chilled pink.

I've been telling people for years that France now drinks more rosé than white wine. I wrote an intro to a wine book solely on pinks. I even risked being interviewed on telly about pinks. Anyway, still, no-one believed me.
I thought.

But now it’s in the Telegraph, so it must be true. And we British are, at last, it seems, joining-in; with sales of pinks from Provence up some 40% in the first quarter of this year! Note; jan, feb, march! So not just a summer tipple then?

Sound sense has prevailed. When I was a lad in the trade customers always declined rosé, saying "it’s neither one thing nor the other". What they really meant was that to be seen drinking rosé was social death. It meant you didn't understand wine.

That stigma now seems to have gone. And the wines have improved beyond belief.

But actually that only means we are back to 'normal'! It is very normal that wine should come out pink. In the Middle Ages most wine was some shade of pink; Bordeaux made only 'Clairet' which was a very light red. There were vast - now vanished - vineyards across northern France that made only pinks. And of course the Mediterranean vineyards - notably Provence - the very first vineyards of France (2,600 years old) made, and still make, mostly rosé....the best of all in my view.

40 years ago I sat at the back of wine classes (tough times, yes) with a lad called Remy Ott. Holidays, he drove me (I've yet to meet a madder driver) back home to his family's estate; Chateau de Selle, of famed Domaines Ott; the unquestioned No. 1 Provence rosé ... then. Today, I'd dare to say - maybe not to his face - our Saint Tropez Rosé might just pip old Remy's wine.

Our pages have plenty of pinks to choose from but I have to say the old St. Trop is what I drink now. (Until I go to Bordeaux in August when I switch to our very own Clairet made at La Clariere by my own fair hand (with help).
The St Trop is the current favourite, however.

There is only one cellar in St Tropez itself; the old co-operative cellar. A bit run-down it was. Years ago we managed with the help of a very influential friend, to get a 'Flying Winemaker' in there. The fruit they harvest is stunning.

Because the ancient peninsular vineyards are protected by all the 'stars' and tycoons who's properties nestle amongst them. They can never be touched or uprooted. All that this great fruit needs is a 'star' winemaker. And the last two years it’s been Adam Hooper chief winemaker at Red Heads in Australia most of the year. He takes his hols in St. Trop whilst making the stunning, fruitbowl-flavoured orange-grey-rather-than-pink, dry-yet-succulent wine I love.

Do what I do; visit St Tropez by wine this summer and save a fortune on petrol and avoid that appalling traffic jam.