Vintage rose champagne is one of our favourite things and this one comes from arguably the most popular producer, Veuve Clicquot, owned by Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey.

Veuve is named after the late, great Widow Clicquot, who was left not only a widow aged 27 but also in charge of running a champagne house. Her legacy is to have left both the brand and the region in better condition than she found them, mostly famously by inventing riddling; the turning of the bottle to remove the yeast sediment into its neck, prior to disgorgement. This resulted in higher quality, cleaner, fresher bubbles in both look and taste. Her quest was quality and she is widely credited with having raised it significantly in the Champagne region and in the bottles it produces.
This rose is typically a blend of base wines with 12% of still red Pinot Noir and aged for three years prior to disgorgement. 

Dry and deliciously good Kiwi roses don't get this good very often. If you notice Whitehaven Rose is paler pink than previously, it is and this wine also happens to be the driest style ever made, with under one gram of residual sugar per litre. It's made from earlier picked Pinot Noir grapes to retain fresh acidity. Minimum skin contact time provides a pale colour a lively red fruit flavours with a long finish.

The story of Whitehaven Wines

Whitehaven Wines began life in 1994 as a romantic business for a couple of corporate escapees, Sue and Greg White, who had given up life in the rat race of Auckland for another kind of life aboard their yacht. When sailing around the country, they took shelter in the Marlborough Sounds from Pacific storms and fell in love with the region. An easy thing to do when harbouring in the spectacularly pristine waters of the Sounds. They decided to settle there on terra firma once more and try their hands at wine production, hiring a winemaker and beginning a business which has now been around for 26 years. Greg has sadly passed away now, leaving a legacy as well as his wife and daughter, Sam, to run the winery.

Their winemaker is Peter Jackson.

This refreshing rose was made using 100% Pinot Noir. The juice was fermented in stainless steel to retain the varietal and fruit characteristics. This wine shows aromas of strawberry, honeysuckle and orange blossom with notes of nectarine, rock melon and cr?me brulee on the palate.