Rosy future

Monday, June 8th, 2009

Talk about everything coming up roses… or rosé. I was amazed at some stats from the April 10 issue of Off Licence News that were trotted out in Wosa’s latest newsletter. In the UK market alone, rosé grew by 17% to account for £545 million of sales. That’s just to February 2009 – and considering June 1 is the official start of summer in the UK, expect that figure to rise again as people break out their sun hats and start decimating the strawberry crop.

Other interesting figures include that volumes are up 13% to a total of 11 million cases and that the United States has snaffled the lion’s share – with 41% of the market. France, the country automatically associated with rosé courtesy of the Provençal connection, has been pipped into second spot by Italy which has 10% market share. South Africa is not far behind, having doubled its share in the past year to 9%. And a quick review of the top 10 brands finds First Cape in fifth and Kumala in ninth.

Five years ago WINE magazine conducted a rosé tasting and sourced virtually all the locally available examples. There were 58 in the tasting. The figure of South African rosé now available stands at more than 400!

And while most of those wines are dry, bucking the trend is a sweetie from Van Loveren in Robertson which is one of the country’s biggest sellers. What to make of that particular statistic?