Stop drinking Whispering Angel rosé – it’s really not worth the hype

The rosé has found a market among everybody from influencers to royals. But wine expert Rosamund Hall says there are much better pink drinks out there – if you know where to look

There are plenty of other wines that should be on your bucket list (Getty/Audrain)

In early Spring 2011, an impossibly glamorous woman swept into the wine shop I was working in, demanding to know when “the Angel” would be back. I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. The “Angel” she was referring to was Whispering Angel, the now internationally famous Provencal rosé hailing from Sacha Lichine’s Chateau d’Esclans in Var, Provence – a wine widely credited for reigniting the world’s love of rosé.

In 2006, Lichine made just 130,000 bottles. Latest estimates suggest that in excess of 1 million cases are now produced and sold in more than 100 countries worldwide, and that it’s the bestselling rosé in the US.

Being a green shoot in the wine trade at the time, I remember our shop being stacked high with salmon-slab boxes of angel juice. The marketing was exquisite – no other wine came in such striking packaging. This was a wine that needed no “selling”, it just grew cherubic wings and flew off the shelf.