Buyer’s Guide to the Rosés of Southern France

Some families play board games together or, perhaps, hike together or even cook together.  The Gabay-Bernheim family, in the South of France, taste wine together and, in the case of Elizabeth Gabay’s Buyer’s Guide to the Rosés of Southern France, Gabay and son Ben Bernheim wrote about these rosés together. Husband David Bernheim worked on the marketing side, and even daughter Rosie did a little tasting. (And, just for the record, they also play games, hike, and cook together!)

Writing a comprehensive guide on rosés in Southern France is no small undertaking. Elizabeth Gabay and Ben Bernheim tasted over 1000 rosés (2020 vintage) in a 10 week period and narrowed the selection to the top 850 bottles. The wines they tasted covered a wide swath of the south, including Provence, the Rhône Valley, Languedoc and even Corsica. Read the original Provence WineZine article, Susan’s interview notes, and the double-blind tasting process that Gabay and Bernheim followed.

The guide costs €20,00 and is available in a handy PDF format.

“This guide, aimed at professionals and serious rosé drinkers, includes tasting notes and commercial information (price, availability, etc) on rosé wines from the south of France, possibly the most extensive tasting notes of rosés ever published from this region.”

Susan Newman Manfull

It was love at first sight when my family and I arrived in the charming village of Lourmarin for a short vacation, nearly 20 years ago. We returned home to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and the next thing I knew, we were planning a much longer sojourn in that village and making arrangements to enroll our daughter in the local school there. That led to buying a maison de village— actually two, then a courtyard, a parking spot, and a bergerie— in our favourite Provençal village where we (readily) adopted that certain joie de vivre, established dear friendships, and, to this day, endeavour to blend in with the crowd at Café Gaby.

We no longer own property in Lourmarin, but we continue to hang our hats there frequently and gather fodder for our souls and The Modern Trobaors and Provence WineZine. There is never a shortage.

The Modern Trobadors, conceived in 2008, is about all things Provence: its markets, hilltop villages, lavender, art, literature, culture, history, food, wine, and news. Provence WineZine, launched in August 2014, focuses on wines from Provence and the Southern Rhône Valley regions—with a special emphasis on Provence's world-renowned rosés—and the men and women who make them.