Rosé in October? This one earns its place

After that, it is largely left alone: a natural ferment, no additions, no fining, only a coarse filtration. Nothing has been polished out of it, which is precisely why it tastes like something rather than nothing.

The autumn fish supper it was waiting for

If you are cooking fish this month, this is your bottle. Sea bass, grilled simply with lemon and nothing clever, is close to a perfect match: the wine's acidity sits exactly where the lemon does, and the savoury undertone keeps it from tasting like a fruit drink next to delicate white flesh.

Prawn skewers under a hot grill work the same way. A bit of char, a bit of smoke, and a dry pink wine with red-fruit lift slicing through it. You do not need a flaming barbecue and a heatwave to make that combination sing; a grill pan and a Tuesday evening will do.

And the roast chicken point bears repeating, because it is the genuinely useful one. A lemon and herb bird on a Sunday in October is one of the best meals this country makes, and most people reach for a white or a light red out of habit. This sits between the two and handles both the skin and the gravy.

Drink it now, not later

This is not a wine to put away and forget. It was made for immediate, joyful drinking, and the whole point of the natural ferment and the minimal handling is to catch that bright fruit at its peak and get it into a bottle.

Which means drinking it within a year or two of release, while the redcurrant is still vivid and the acidity still zips. The reward for patience here is less wine, not more.

Serve it properly cold, colder than you think, straight from the bottom shelf of the fridge. Then let it sit in the glass for a few minutes as it warms slightly: the savoury depth opens up, and you get more of that granitic texture on the finish. A 750ml bottle shared across a roast chicken and a bowl of griddled vegetables does not tend to last the evening.

If October rosé still feels like a contradiction, think of it less as a summer wine out of season and more as a light red that happens to be pink. That is closer to the truth, and it is how it behaves at the table.

If that sounds like your kind of October, Wild House Rose belongs next to a lemony roast chicken or a pan of charred peppers rather than in storage until spring. It suits anyone who likes their pink wine dry, savoury and with something to say, and it is worth opening while the fruit is at its brightest. The rest of our South African rosé is there if you want to keep going.