There were rosés before there was Whispering Angel, but only in the way that there were colas before there was Coke. Yes, ex-pats had long sloshed glasses of pink wine – often in the ‘piscine’ style, tinkling with a fistful of crushed ice – at their second homes in Provence and the Languedoc. And yes, winey-types would tell you that something like a fine Bandol, with its heady blushing tones, could rival many grander appellations for beauty and guile. But Sacha Lichine’s genius, more than a quarter of a century ago now, was to see that rosé could be rosé, so to speak. A wine as celebratory and brand-led as a champagne, and as mineral-edged and thirst-slaking as a white Burgundy. A wine whose pretty, peachy tones – long considered neither-here-nor-there between the stately pillars of red and white – might well be part of its sensual appeal. But mostly Lichine – a proper bon vivant who is often rightly described as ‘Falstaffian’ in his outlook – seemed to simply like what it stood for: a glass of the good life, unpretentious and celebratory; that ‘beaker of the warm south’ that good old Keats longed for.