Utterly delicious unserious wine: Soumah Al Fiori Rose 2014

You know what’s wrong with wine critique? The most simply delicious wines get proportionately less love.

Basically, there is just a big disconnect between pleasure and wine quality, with hard to drink – yet structured – wines landing critical admiration, while the utterly drinkable – yet straightforward – drink-young stuff gets pushed aside.

Take basic AC Chablis as an example. Technically, it’s just inexpensive, delicate, unoaked white wine, with the emphasis on freshness, without any attempts at amazing length or complexity.

Yet wines like that are actually the most enjoyable drinks, purely because they achieve what they’re intending to do – be delicious. I’d much rather, for example, drink a delicate young Chablis than a big and firm Langhorne Cabernet any day.

Rose, too, fits into that boat perfectly, driven more by fruit and texture without any pretensions whatsoever.

Indeed this Soumah is a perfect case in point. A blend of Shiraz and Pinot free run juice (with a dash of Savagnin), it is just a bright, open, sunny, and properly balanced juicy rose that I want to drink copious amounts of. There’s some textural complexity thanks to some careful barrel ferment and battonage – and some tart acidity – but on the whole its just fruity wine, without extraordinary anything.

But that’s the most charming thing about this. The brightness of strawberry and redcurrant fruit just jumps out the of glass, the mouthfeel faintly creamy and juicy and the whole package trim and taut without sweetness.

If ever there was a wine to score big on drink-a-case-ability rather than seriousness then this is it. I’m giving it decent points just because it is unseriously awesome.

Details: 12.6%, Screwcap, $24
Source: Sample
Tasted: Dec 14
Drink: 2014-2016
Score: 18/20, 93/100
Would I buy it? I’d drink half a case.
Buy online: Soumah website