Meet the Most Rosé-Obsessed Man in London

When I meet Jason Phillips in an upmarket restaurant in London’s sophisticated St. James neighbourhood, he is surrounded by wine. The starched white cloth covering the table in front of him is barely visible under countless bottles that clink loudly when I accidentally knock the table. Other diners are starting to stare.

“Shall I pose as if I’m giving all the bottles a hug?” he says with a booming laugh.

I should mention that it’s 10 AM on a weekday. Those other diners are still eating breakfast.

But it doesn’t faze Phillips. He’s the restaurant manager here at Franco’s, and it’s not just any old plonk on the table. Every bottle in front of us contains pink wine. Yep, we’re talking rosé. Phillips is something of a fanatic.

“I love rosé,” he says. “For me, it’s fun, it’s optimistic, it’s welcoming, it’s a shared experience between friends, it’s a celebration of the summer. We now have 70 rosé wines on the list here from France, Italy, and the New World.”

Jason Phillips, general manager of London restaurant Franco’s, with his beloved rosé wine list. Photo by the author.

For the last ten years, Phillips has scoured the world’s vineyards to carefully curate a rosé menu unrivalled by any other wine bar or restaurant in the UK (size-wise, at least). Every May, Franco’s becomes a Mecca for pink wine.

“I wanted to have two distinct wine lists in the winter and summer. The winter offering was easy because you’ve got wonderful, rich, full-bodied Tuscan wines,” Phillips explains. “When I was thinking about summer, we were talking about how to best represent the different regions in Italy. Then it just came to me—rosé!”

He continues: “We started with six wines on the list ten years ago. Then the next year we had 12. Then it was 24. Then it was 48. It just kept growing. Then we decided to start throwing a party every May when we launched the list.

A small selection of the rosé wines at Franco’s. Photo courtesy Franco’s.

“Twelve years ago it was like, ‘Really? Who drinks rosé?’ Now, rosé has come on leaps and bounds, and every year it just gets that bit more popular.”

But there’s no escaping the fact that rosé still has a bit of a basic bitch rep. I put the question to Phillips: Why do people think rosé is trashy?

He gasps in horror. “Trashy?!”

But then concedes: “A lot of people do get quite sniffy about rosé. In the past, they just mixed white and red grapes to make it, but that’s just a cocktail, it’s not really wine! And Mateus rosé is the wine people remember—it was one of the biggest selling wines in the country—but it was a large production wine and cheap.”

“Then people started to travel more around Europe, trying local wines in the south of France or the Amalfi Coast, and wanted that at home. As the offering increased and the production quality increased, the wine has got better. We’ve seen a massive growth in acceptance and take-up.”

Phillips sums up: “In the last five years, rosé has become part of the scene. You’re on the boat, you’re in St. Tropez, you’re drinking rosé.”

I’m more likely to be drinking in a park in Costa Del Hackney, but I get the jist.

Phillips’ rosé menu. Photo by the author.

Putting the bottles to one side, Phillips shows me this summer’s rosé list. I notice that it’s colour-coded to show how pale pink or blush (more red) each wine is.

“Well,” he reasons, “you know if you say to the waiter you like a pale rosé, how do you know his version of pale is the same as yours?”

No frosé on the menu?

That booming laugh echoes around the dining room again.

“My attitude in hospitality is that it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it well. There’s place for things like frosé and if there weren’t people trying new things, we’d never find out about new markets,” Phillips says diplomatically. “If there is a market for it and people like it, then fantastic. I just don’t think we’ll be serving it here.”

He laughs again but firmly underlines his stance: “I think there’s a market for frosé—but perhaps not here.”

Ah well, Franco’s’ loss.

After flipping through the wine list and checking off multiple countries, regions, and styles, I ask Phillips how to go about picking a decent rosé if I’m in Tesco, rather than a fancy restaurant (or St. Tropez).

“The general rule has been that light equals dry and the redder ones will be more fruit-driven,” he explains. “And you should remember that people often mistake fruit-driven for sweet. It’s still a dry wine but it’s that fruitiness is sometimes mistaken for sweetness.”

Photo courtesy Franco’s.

He continues: “There’s one production method where red grapes will have skin contact when they’re pressed and the longer they’re kept in contact with the skin, the more red the rosé. There’s another system called saignée (which translates as bleeding) where the weight of the red grapes on the pressing rack forces a natural run-off. You can’t produce huge quantities from this method but it makes a very pale wine which is sometimes called vin gris [which literally translates as grey wine].”

But Phillips’ number one rule for choosing a good pink wine is one I can totally get behind: buy, try, and repeat.

“Go to the supermarket, get a really, really light rosé, get a medium one, and get a dark one. Put them each in a paper bag, drink out of a mug so you can’t see the colour, and try them. You’ll soon work out what you do and don’t like—without projecting any prejudice.”

Cheers to that.