In 1936, a wine merchant named Gabriel Farnet drove through the hills of the Saint-Tropez peninsula and stopped at a 17-acre vineyard overlooking the Gulf. There was a 19th-century château on the property, a small chapel, and vines that had been neglected during the war years. He bought it, replanted everything — Grenache, Cinsault, Syrah, Mourvèdre — and started making rosé at a time when nobody outside the South of France particularly cared about rosé.
His daughter Monique married a Parisian notary named Étienne Matton in 1960, and on the occasion she designed a new bottle for the estate’s flagship wine. She gave it a long, tapered silhouette unlike anything else in the region at the time and called it La Provençale. Within a decade, almost every other estate in Côtes de Provence had adopted the same bottle shape. It became the visual shorthand for an entire appellation. If you have ever picked up a slim, elongated rosé bottle in a restaurant or a wine shop, you are looking at the echo of something Monique Farnet-Matton drew up in her kitchen ninety years ago.
That wine is Château Minuty M Rosé, and it is one of the most important bottles in the history of Provençal rosé — available right now at Total Wine and Spec’s across Dallas for around $20 to $22. LVMH, the luxury group that owns Dom Pérignon and Moët & Chandon, acquired a majority stake in Minuty in 2023 for somewhere between $350 million and $450 million. They paid that number because Minuty is the global leader in Côtes de Provence rosé and has been for decades. The wine that launched a category costs twenty dollars. That is not something that happens very often.
The M is made from Grenache and Cinsault, harvested by hand — one of the last estates in Provence to do it entirely that way — and fermented cold in stainless steel to preserve the aromatics. The color is pale salmon, closer to onion skin than the deeper pinks that most American rosés run. The nose is red berries and white peach with something faintly herbal underneath — garrigue, the wild scrubland of southern France that perfumes everything grown near it. On the palate it is dry, which is the first thing to say clearly: this is not sweet. It is crisp and round at the same time, with a citrusy brightness that makes the finish clean rather than cloying. The winemaker’s own notes describe the palate as “greedy and round, with crunchy fruit.” That is exactly right.
Serve it cold — proper cold, not refrigerator cold. Thirty minutes in an ice bucket before you open it. It pairs with grilled shrimp, a cold poached salmon, oysters, a good cheese board, fish tacos, watermelon and feta, or nothing at all on a hot May evening in Texas. The 2026 limited edition bottle was designed by Italian artist Lucia Vinti specifically for this summer, with a luminous Mediterranean illustration built around the wine’s aromatic notes of red berries and peaches. It is one of the better-looking bottles on any shelf right now.
There is a version of this story where the wine costs twice as much and it would still be worth writing about. At $20 it is the type of wine you buy two of — one for dinner, one for the following Tuesday when you need to remember that summer in Texas is survivable with the right glass in your hand.
Château Minuty M Rosé is available at Total Wine & More and Spec’s locations across Dallas. Around $20 to $22 a bottle. Drink it this summer.
