When I was in college, the wine hidden in dorm rooms and under the seats of our cars was usually Mateus. This rose wine from Portugal came on the scene in 1942 and was a part of rapidly developing wine markets in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere.  It’s a nostalgic drink for my generation now, though I haven’t had rose wine for years.

According to the Wikipedia entry, “Sogrape, the family company which owns the brand and which is the largest wine producer in Portugal, has more recently diversified into other areas of the Portuguese wine industry, as the popularity of its Mateus brand has declined. In the UK in 2002, the wine was re-packaged and relaunched in a deliberate effort to capitalise on 1970s nostalgia, although the wine itself had already been made less sweet and slightly more sparkling, in response to modern popular preference for slightly drier wine. The wine continues to be sold, however, in its distinctive narrow-necked, flask-shaped bottle, with unique “baroque historic mansion” label (Mateus Palace in Vila Real, Portugal) and real cork stopper, but also comes with a screw top from some distributors in Northern European countries and the U.K. market.”

“We” saw drinking people in groups: the Mateus group, the Budweiser group, and the bourbon group. We seldom mixed people from the non-wine groups because–how do I say this?–they had no culture and brains the size of raisins. Most of us grew up and decided that rose wines were pretty much like Kool-Aid. After a brief flirtation with Christian Brothers Napa Rose, we left wine for beer and cocktails because those were “adult” drinks, and becoming adults seemed like an important rite of passage.

Now I drink wine or Scotch because they require no mixing and no expensive selection of the supplies needed for cocktails. And when I drink wine, it’s always dark red. But when I think of the wonder years, I recall Mateus as a part of growing up.

–Malcolm