An Old School Campino in a Glass

Some wines get opened because you have planned a meal around them. Others because you have been looking forward to trying the bottle for weeks. This wasn’t either of those.

I’d just got back from a round of golf and had also had the thoroughly unwelcome news that my six year old is having a bit of a rough time at school. Safe to say, I fancied a glass of wine.

Tonight’s bottle was the 2025 La Vieille Ferme Rosé, a southern French rosé from the Perrin family. I’ve seen La Vieille Ferme plenty of times and it sits firmly in that affordable, everyday drinking territory, so I wasn’t expecting anything hugely complicated. I just wanted something cold and easy to drink.

In the Glass

It’s a very pale salmon pink, almost peachy in colour. Pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a modern southern French rosé and certainly looks the part straight from the fridge.

On the Nose

The first thing that struck me was sweetness.

It smells quite sweet and initially had me wondering whether there was a decent amount of residual sugar in here. Beyond that, though, I really struggled to pull out much in the way of individual flavours.

There’s some soft fruitiness there, but nothing was jumping out enough for me to confidently call it strawberry, raspberry or anything else specifically.

This definitely isn’t one of those wines where you can sit with your nose in the glass for ten minutes discovering something new every time you go back.

On the Palate

This is where it becomes much easier to describe.

It’s sweet, soft and very red fruit driven, and suddenly something from my childhood came straight into my head.

Campino.

Those old strawberry and cream sweets. That’s exactly where this takes me.

There’s a soft strawberry flavour with that slightly creamy, confectionery sweetness that makes it feel almost like somebody has melted an old school Campino into a glass of rosé and once I’d made that connection, I couldn’t really untaste it.

It’s not particularly complex, but I’m not convinced it’s trying to be. It’s fruity, easy drinking and goes down remarkably easily after walking around a golf course for four hours.

Through the Terroir Verdict

La Vieille Ferme Rosé 2025 isn’t a wine I’m going to spend the evening pulling apart looking for layers of complexity. The nose is fairly restrained and I struggled to find much definition there at all.

On the palate, though, it’s much more expressive. Soft red fruit, plenty of perceived sweetness and that unmistakable strawberry and cream Campino character.

Sometimes a tasting note doesn’t need to be redcurrants picked from the eastern side of a hill at sunrise. Sometimes it just tastes like a sweet you haven’t thought about for twenty years.

And tonight, this tastes like Campino.