The battle of the rosés is back in the UK!
It’s official: we’ve just added the Best Rosé Wine List category back into Star Wine List of the Year UK 2026. So the question for our UK sommeliers is: do you have a rosé list worthy of a Gold Star?
Rosé. It’s not just for summer. And it’s not just for beaches. Even if it’s very good in summer, and when on a beach. So Star Wine List is happy to announce that the highly competitive Best Rosé Wine List category is back for our UK awards this spring, sponsored by Château Galoupet.
Star Wine List of the Year UK 2026
In 2025, the Best Rosé Wine List was awarded to The Terrace Rooms & Wine on the Isle of Wight, the “wine hotel” masterminded by Tom and Ashley Fahey in Ventnor.
“We see our job as creating new rosé consumers,” Tom told us, on collecting a Gold Star at last season’s awards event at The Winemakers Club in London, in March 2025. “So people who are not just, ‘I’ll have a pale rosé and chuck an ice cube in.’ We create people who are interested in rosé. That’s what we do.”
Ashley added that the award was especially welcome, “because we’re not from London. And also we are on a beach where typically people drink rosé in the sunshine on the beach. So I think actually it says a lot – about what rosé’s about, but what we’re also trying to change at the same time.”
And how does this wine power couple do that?
“Well, we do tastings every night,” says Ashley. “So we’re a wine hotel. Every night there is a 5pm tasting and, actually, I’d say a lot of our tastings revolve around: one, changing people’s views on things; but also, we’ll do a pale-to-dark rosé. So we’ll start with a blush and then we’ll go on to really a dark, maybe even darker than a Tavel – there’s something called grenadines, which some people might say is a red, or a Clairet from Bordeaux – things like that. And what it does is prove that not everything is a white Zinfandel, not everything’s sweet just because it’s dark. Dark is beautiful. And people quite often leave with the darker rosés. We change their perspective.
“And Christmas: we had more guests drinking rosé with their turkey than Pinot Noirs for example, or their Riojas. They came in and we, in the end, gave them a dark, fuller-bodied rosé and they loved it.”
“My hobby is subverting people’s expectations,” adds Tom. “I don’t like to give them what they want. I like to give them what they should want. And, together, we’ve done a list that allows us to do that – at all price ranges, with lots of culty stuff, and all colours. I would describe it as like a white wine rosé list: we have the same variety and the same global focus as a white wine list would have, but as rosé.”
This is tried and tested, with The Terrace earning countless plaudits for its wine programme – from Star Wine List and more besides. Perhaps another Gold Star could be on the cards in the new year...
Enter the competition
Do you want the Gold Star for Best Rosé Wine List in 2026? Enter our UK competition now. The deadline for entries is 18 January 2026.
This category is sponsored by Château Galoupet for our UK awards, which are hosted alongside media partner The Buyer.
Château Galoupet will also be sponsoring the Best Rosé Wine List category in Star Wine List of the Year France 2026. Sommeliers in other countries should explore our global tour page to see where we’ll be hosting the next awards events of this season.
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