Chateau Maime: Which Provence Rose to Buy
Chateau Maime is a Cotes de Provence estate that makes two kosher roses, and they sit twenty dollars apart. People arrive at the name looking for one and do not always realise there are two, so here is what each one is and which of them you actually want.
The estate
Chateau Maime sits in the Var, in the heart of Cotes de Provence, on land with a Provencal chapel that goes back to the Middle Ages. That detail matters less than what the region does to the wine, but it explains the label.
Cotes de Provence is the appellation that taught the world what rose is supposed to look like: very pale, almost onion-skin pink, and bone dry. Grenache, Cinsault and Syrah are the grapes, picked early to hold acidity, pressed gently so almost no colour comes off the skins. The pale colour is not a sign of a weak wine. It is the entire point of the style.
The two bottles
Both are pale, dry Cotes de Provence made from the same three grapes. The difference that decides it for most people is not the price - it is that the $19.99 Collection is mevushal and the $39.99 is not.
Which one to buy
Buy the Collection at $19.99 if the wine is going to a table where mevushal settles the question, or if you are buying volume. This is a real Cotes de Provence in a kosher, mevushal bottle at under twenty dollars, which is not a thing that used to exist. White peach, wild strawberry, orange blossom, a whisper of Provencal herbs, and a clean mineral finish. It is the summer weeknight pour, and it is the bottle to buy by the case for a vort, a sheva brachos or a Shabbos lunch in July.
Buy the Cotes de Provence at $39.99 if you are pouring it as the wine rather than as a wine. Grenache and Cinsault lead with Syrah lifting the spine. It is drier and more savoury than the Collection - wild strawberry and white peach up front, then grapefruit pith and a saline edge that keeps going after you have swallowed. It holds its own next to grilled salmon or a serious dairy lunch in a way the Collection does not quite manage.
Neither is a compromise version of the other. They are the same estate answering two different questions.
Both are in the Chateau Maime collection if you want to see them together. If mevushal is the deciding factor and you want to understand what you are actually deciding, we wrote it out plainly in mevushal vs non-mevushal.
Is Provence rose sweet?
No, and this is the single most common mistake people make buying rose.
Pink says sweet to a lot of shoppers because the pink wine most of us met first was sweet. Provence rose is the opposite end of the scale - it is bone dry, more so than most white wine, and the fruit you taste is aroma rather than sugar. If you hand a bottle of Chateau Maime to somebody expecting a sweet blush wine, they will be surprised, and usually pleasantly.
We took the whole question apart in is rose sweet or dry.
How it compares
Within Provence, the nearest thing on our shelf is Chateau de Berne Rose - same appellation, same pale-and-dry brief, a slightly different house style. Buying both and drinking them side by side on a Friday afternoon is a cheap and genuinely enjoyable way to work out which direction you prefer.
Wider than that, the dry rose collection is where to go if the Provence style is what you are after, and the full kosher rose shelf covers everything from these up to the sweeter end. Our pick of the whole category is in the best kosher rose wine.
Serving it
Colder than you think - 45 degrees or so, straight out of the fridge, and put it back between pours. Provence rose that has warmed up on a table in the sun goes flabby and loses the mineral edge that you paid for.
Drink it young. Both of these are made to be opened within a year or two of the vintage; there is no reward for laying them down. And do not save rose for the summer only - the Cotes de Provence at $39.99 is a very good Yom Tov lunch wine in any month, and it handles salmon, schnitzel and a herby pasta better than most whites at the price.
Chateau Maime is French, so if you want the map of what else France sends us, that is the French kosher wine guide.
We ship anywhere in the country. Buy the Collection by the case and keep a couple of the Cotes de Provence back for when the meal deserves it.
