WINE OF THE WEEK: Poças Cold Smoked Rosé 2025, Douro, Portugal
£17.99–£18.95, House of Townend, Harris & Co
Even if you haven’t got pale, dry rosé on your radar at the moment, please try this, or at least hear me out. This is a rosé fermented in new oak. Wait! Don’t let that put you off. It’s a really characterful, elegant and original wine.
Most rosé producers are wary of fermenting and/or ageing their wines in new oak. Wine drinkers likewise, I think, are mostly quite wary of the oak-plus-rosé combo. But when it’s done well, the results can be exciting, giving rosés that go especially well with food and which, often, can also be cellared.
The problem is that, when they’re made with all the TLC of Grand Cru Burgundy they end up with a Grand Cru Burgundy price tag.
Which brings me back to the much more accessibly priced Poças Cold Smoked Rosé (such a good name). While not being a rock-bottom price, it’s more than reasonable for the quality and way below the price of most rosés aged in new oak.
The oak here – 300-litre new French barrels – is deftly used to give a fine smoky-oak sheen to the dried apricot and pot pourri aromas, the baked apple and blood orange fruit, delicately lees-enriched texture and the fresh, dry, mineral finish. There’s a lot going on and yet it’s still only 11.5% alcohol.
It comes from the Douro – port country – and is a blend of two classic port grape varieties, Touriga Nacional and Tinta Roriz, from vines aged 25–40 years planted in typical schist and granite Douro soils. Poças, the family-owned and run company now into its fourth-generation, has been producing port for more than a century and added table wines to the mix in 1990, using the Fora da Série banner. Poças Fora da Série Cold Smoked Rosé 2025, to give it it’s full title, is a new wine.
It's light enough for an aperitif but goes well with food, too, especially fish and shellfish, including grilled and barbecued fish such as sea bream or sardines, cured salmon, hot smoked salmon and mild smoked salmon, fresh tuna, crab linguine (with parsley, garlic and a smidge of chilli), scallops, seafood salads and salade niçoise.
It also pairs with saffron risotto and with chicken, roast or in lightly creamy sauces, smoked chicken and smoked duck. And I have a bit of a thing about drinking really good rosé on Boxing Day, so Poças Cold Smoked Rosé might be this year’s choice. 11.5%. Empty bottle weight: 650g.
Poças Cold Smoked Rosé 2025, Douro, Portugal
£17.99, House of Townend; £18.95, Harris & Co
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