Mateus Rosé: How Portugal Taught the World to Drink Pink

What Is Mateus Rosé?

You might not remember actually drinking Mateus – the Portuguese rosé wine that comes in a distinctive flask-shaped bottle – but if its sales figures are anything to go by, you probably have. Your parents definitely did, because during the 1970s it was the biggest-selling rosé in the world.

Ask anyone of a certain age to name a pink wine and chances are they’d say Mateus. Unlike the fashionable Provence rosés that dominate today however, it wasn’t pale, whisper-light or bone dry. It was darker, lightly sparkling and slightly sweet.

So how did a rosé from a country better known internationally for Port become one of the world’s most recognisable wine brands? And long before Provence convinced us that pale pink wine represented Mediterranean luxury, how did Portugal become the country that first persuaded millions of people to drink rosé?

The Accidental Birth of Mateus Rosé

It was 1942, the darkest days of the Second World War. Although Portugal remained officially neutral, the conflict had hit its economy hard. The country’s wine industry depended heavily on Port and Madeira, but wartime disruption had caused exports to slump, leaving growers with a surplus of grapes and few buyers.

Fernando Van Zeller Guedes saw an opportunity. Along with 29 friends, he founded Sociedade Comercial dos Vinhos de Mesa de Portugal (later shortened to Sogrape) to produce and promote still table wines – a bold move at a time when Portugal had little international reputation beyond its fortified wines.

The company’s first focus was Brazil, a natural export market thanks to the countries’ shared language and long-standing commercial ties. But Guedes knew simply producing red and white table wines wouldn’t be enough to give either Sogrape or Portugal a distinctive identity on the international stage.

Portugal had little tradition of rosé either, but that was precisely what made it interesting After several failed attempts, and with the help of a French winemaker nicknamed Le Petit de Gaulle, the team eventually created a lightly sparkling, medium-dry rosé made from the Portuguese grapes Baga and Rufete alongside Port varieties including Tinta Barroca and Touriga Franca.

Before Provence, Rosé Came in Every Shade

The wine was an immediate success in Brazil, but when the country introduced strict federal controls on wine imports, Sogrape began searching for markets closer to home.

Fortunately, Europe was already ready for a wine like Mateus.

Today, many drinkers assume rosé should be pale, crisp and bone dry, but that idea simply didn’t exist during the 1940s and 50s. Rosé was defined by far greater diversity in both colour and sweetness.

The continent’s two best-known rosés were both French, yet they couldn’t have been more different.

Tavel, from the Southern Rhône, is one of France’s darkest rosés, made predominantly from the same Grenache and Cinsault grapes grown in neighbouring Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Full-bodied, savoury and structured, it was considered a gastronomic wine rather than simply something to drink on a hot afternoon.

At the other end of the spectrum sat Rosé d’Anjou from the Loire Valley. Typically a brighter mid-pink, it was made largely from Grolleau, Cabernet Franc and Gamay, and ranged from off-dry to medium sweet.

Against that backdrop, Mateus didn’t seem unusual at all. Consumers were already comfortable with darker rosés and sweeter styles. What Portugal lacked wasn’t the right wine – it lacked recognition.

Mateus would eventually solve both problems at once.

Why Mateus Looked Different to Every Other Wine

If the wine itself fitted comfortably into the rosé landscape of the time, its packaging certainly didn’t.

Rather than using the tall, straight-sided Bordeaux bottles or the gently sloping Burgundy bottles that had become the standard shape for most wines, Guedes chose a squat dark-green flask inspired by the water canteens carried by soldiers during the First World War. Sitting on a shelf, it looked unlike anything else. Decades before branding became central to wine marketing, Mateus had created a bottle people could recognise instantly.

The label also reinforced that identity. It featured the striking Baroque façade of Mateus Palace near Vila Real in northern Portugal, from which the wine takes its name.

The bottle didn’t simply distinguish Mateus from other wines. It became one of the first recognisable symbols of modern Portugal to appear on supermarket shelves around the world.

How Mateus Became the World’s Best-Selling Rosé

It might still have remained a niche Portuguese wine had it not been for the marketing instincts of Fernando Van Zeller Guedes.

Rather than relying solely on distributors, Guedes reportedly sent two bottles to every Portuguese embassy and to friends and acquaintances around the world, asking them to drink one bottle and pass the second on to somebody else. It was a remarkably simple idea, but decades before influencer marketing or social media, it created exactly the kind of word-of-mouth publicity money couldn’t buy. Sales climbed steadily throughout the 1950s, then Britain came calling.

In 1961, Guedes sponsored a horse race at Royal Ascot, personally presenting the prize to the winner. Mateus branding was discreetly present throughout the event and the wine was served to racegoers, while Queen Elizabeth II was in attendance. [Some have said that this soon became one of her favourite wines, although slake has heard on good authority that the late Queen’s tastes leaned more towards German Riesling. Besides, Mateus feels much more Princess Margaret.] Before long, The Savoy had placed an order.

In an era when Britain remained deeply class-conscious, that sort of endorsement carried enormous weight. If royalty, Ascot and one of London’s most prestigious hotels were serving Mateus, ordinary drinkers wanted to know what they were missing. The taste for Mateus quickly filtered down through society.

The wine also arrived at exactly the right cultural moment. During the early 1960s, affordable package holidays transformed the way Britons travelled. Companies such as Clarksons and Janaway Travel began offering flights, transfers and full-board accommodation to destinations including Portugal, opening up continental Europe to families who had never travelled abroad before.

The Algarve quickly became one of Britain’s favourite holiday destinations. Faro Airport opened in 1965 and, within five years, around one million visitors were arriving each year. For many Britons, this was their first experience of Portugal: grilled sardines, warm evenings, whitewashed fishing villages, tiled streets and a slower pace of life.

Mateus became part of that experience.

Holidaymakers returned home looking for small reminders of their trip, and few bottles were easier to recognise on supermarket shelves than the squat green flask they had seen on restaurant tables throughout Portugal. Buying Mateus wasn’t simply buying wine; it was bringing a little of Portugal home with you.

By the end of the 1960s, Mateus had become a genuine cultural phenomenon. Elton John referenced it in his lyrics. Jimi Hendrix was pictured swigging a half-bottle, and Mateus had broken America.

A 1971 American television advert perfectly captured the brand’s appeal. A glamorous young couple pour glasses of Mateus before the scene cuts to sun-drenched Portuguese streets as the narrator describes it as “the rosé wine that’s like a trip to Portugal.”

Mateus had become one of Portugal’s greatest ambassadors abroad.

Why Mateus Fell Out of Fashion

Then the tide began to turn. During the late 1970s and into the 1980s, consumers were travelling more, discovering new wine regions and drinking a much wider range of styles at home. Wines that had once felt ‘exotic’ were becoming familiar, while critics increasingly championed drier wines. (Although the wine trade has arguably always overestimated consumers’ appetite for aggressively dry wines – just look at the extraordinary success of Yellow Tail in the 2000s.)

Mateus also became a victim of its own popularity. Alongside Blue Nun, it appeared everywhere: on dinner party tables, in Berni Inns (a steakhouse that at one point the largest restaurant chain outside the United States) and at family celebrations. What had once felt sophisticated gradually became ordinary, then old-fashioned. Comedians began using it as shorthand for suburban taste, and younger drinkers started looking elsewhere.

At the same time, another rosé revolution was quietly taking shape in southern France.

Provence had long produced pale, dry rosés, but throughout the 1980s and 90s the region steadily improved quality and built a reputation for a fresher, more elegant style. Outside France, however, it was still a relatively niche category.

That changed in 2006 with the launch of Whispering Angel.

Rather than inventing Provence rosé, it gave the region a flagship brand and helped turn pale pink wine into a lifestyle product associated with luxury holidays, beach clubs and effortless summer living.

Consumer expectations changed and Portugal quietly lost ownership of a category it had helped popularise.

Is Mateus Rosé Still Worth Drinking?

Sales may have fallen from their extraordinary peak, but Mateus remains Portugal’s biggest international wine brand.

Rather than abandoning the wine that made its name, Sogrape has gradually adapted the range to changing tastes. Alongside the original lightly sparkling rosé, the company has introduced styles such as Mateus Dry Rosé, presented in a clear bottle with more contemporary packaging. While the classic wine continues to rely on indigenous Portuguese varieties, newer bottlings have incorporated grapes such as Shiraz for some export markets.

Today, around 20 million bottles of Mateus are still sold every year in more than 120 countries.

[During a recent trip to Porto, slake’s editor was struck by how often it still appeared on restaurant tables. While the rest of the world may associate Portugal with Douro reds or Vinho Verde, at home Mateus remains a familiar part of everyday drinking culture.]

The UK, Spain, Italy, Australia, Belgium and Japan remain among its biggest markets, while a new generation of drinkers is rediscovering the original alongside the growing nostalgia for 1970s and 80s food and drink culture.

And perhaps that’s the biggest surprise of all. Strip away the jokes, the suburban dinner party clichés and decades of wine snobbery, and you’re left with a perfectly enjoyable, easy-drinking rosé that offers something genuinely different from the sea of pale Provence wines lining supermarket shelves today.