Bastide Blanche hits a home-run with their 2025 Rosé. Is it the most age-worthy Bandol rosé out there? No, but I’m fine leaving that lane to other domaines whose wines cost twice the price. This is fully emblematic of the 2025 vintage in Bandol – ripe, effusive fruit married to surprisingly precise balance. It was a warm vintage, but this wine shows just how well the best producers manage the warmth to find that sweet spot of acidity and texture. The nose is tight at first but it opens quickly with aromas of dried cherry, rhubarb, and raspberry. There’s a faint undertow of Mourvèdre meatiness to it, but that’s quickly overshadowed by bright watermelon, rhubarb, crushed rose petal, and lilac. The palate shows a really wonderful tightrope tension between round, weighty texture and just-right acidic vibrancy. The excellent, deeply concentrated fruits center around ripe Bing cherry, pomegranate, and rhubarb with flashes of touches of iron and gravel minerality and faint white pepper. The finish is, again, extremely well detailed and articulate, going on at length. You could lay this down for a few years, and it will certainly perform, but why wait? It’s that good even today.
93 points, Andrew Kitz, B-21 Rhône Buyer (Jul 2026)
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