WINEMAKER. ADVENTURER. HUSTLER. ROSÉ WRANGLER. He’s been called all these things. So who exactly is Charles Bieler, and what are his wines all about?
I Feature sponsored by Vintrigue Wines. For more information, visit www.vintriguewines.com or call 01207 521234
n a career of numerous epithets, the first earned by winemaker Charles Bieler was hustler. Charles’ merchant banker dad started making wine in Provence in 1992 after selling a Lancashire pet food business. “He decided Provence was a more beautiful place than Blackburn, certainly with a bit more sunshine,” says Charles. Six years later, Charles was recruited to lead a north American sales drive. “The wines were charming but he had a lot of trouble getting them out into the world.” Charles – born in Henley-on-Thames but raised mainly in the US and Canada –
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bought a 1965 black convertible Cadillac, painted it pink and hit the road. “The goal was to get out there and hustle.” It was the start of a wine career that’s led to him becoming an acclaimed maker of what he calls “edgy and traditional” wines in France and the US. He has continued that early association with Provence to make his own wine in Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence, which has earned him the tag of the rosé wrangler. “I’m OK with that,” he says during a Zoom tasting, hosted by The Wine Merchant, of a quartet of his wines that are all available through Vintrigue, the independents division of Lanchester Wines. After his father’s Château Routas estate was sold in 2005 there was a chance to “reset and think: if our goal in Provence is strictly to make high-tone, savoury rosé, what’s the best place to do it?” Aix-en-Provence offered high altitude vineyards with cooler evenings and later ripening which promised wines with depth and personality. “I think about rosé as a three-way tugof-war between the red fruit character, the savoury elements and the acidity,” he says. “I don’t want any one side to win out. “I want enough of the herbal floral component to challenge the red fruit, and you need the acidity to hold it all together.”
AIX MARKS THE SPOT
The Bieler Pere & Fils 2019 Sabine rosé (£13.99) included in the tasting has the familiar Grenache and Syrah supported by Cinsault, Cabernet Sauvignon and Rolle. “I’ve always liked the herbal, spicy note that Cabernet brings,” says Charles. “Rolle adds a floral, almost apricoty aromatic and mid-palate density. “For me, the difference between great rosé and mediocre rosé is not the power of the aromatics, it’s the density of the midpalate, the transition from the fruit up front to the acidity at the end, a sort of creamy bridge.” Though the wine is fashionably pale in colour, flavour expression is his goal. “We really don’t think about colour,” he says. “I know a lot of producers obsess about it but to achieve that lighter and lighter colour you’re probably picking a little earlier than you would if flavour was your goal.”