Minuty M: the rosé that gets a new skin every year

There are two ways to combine art and wine. The first: take an existing bottle and ask someone to design a label. The second: start from the wine's sensory profile and ask an artist to translate it visually. Since 2018, Château Minuty has been practising the second approach with its M cuvée.

Every year, an artist receives an identical brief: immerse yourself in the wine, its terroir, the place where it is born, and propose an image. Not a logo. Not a decoration. A work that must function on a 75 cl bottle as well as on a wall. The result is a series of bottles that build, vintage after vintage, a coherent body of work. Five editions, five very different perspectives on the same rosé.

The M cuvée: a Cru Classé rosé as canvas

Before the artists, you need to understand what the M cuvée is. Château Minuty is a Cru Classé des Côtes de Provence, established on the Saint-Tropez peninsula since 1936. 200 hectares of vines on the hillsides of Gassin and Ramatuelle, between schists and limestone, with sea breezes playing a central role in the freshness of the profiles. The estate joined the LVMH portfolio in 2022, which is not without significance for understanding its editorial ambitions.

The M cuvée is the estate's entry-level wine, but a seriously built rosé. The blend centres on Grenache (60%), with Syrah (20%), Cinsault (15%) and Tibouren (5%), the latter an almost-exclusive variety of the Saint-Tropez peninsula. The winemaking favours freshness: direct pressing, low-temperature fermentation, no malolactic. The profile is clean, fruity, lively, immediately pleasurable. A wine made to be drunk within the year, under a pine tree, and that is precisely what the artists must capture.

Five artists, five visions of the same rosé

Lucia Vinti, 2025: the energy of the everyday

The 2025 edition returns to the fundamentals of hand-drawn illustration. Lucia Vinti is an Italian illustrator based in London whose work — pencil, paint, collage — celebrates people, places, food and culture with energy and joy. Her style is colourful, direct, without irony. It says something immediately positive about the world.

In the glass, the 2025 vintage shows an elegantly pale colour with rose petal nuances. The nose is clean and complex, blending red fruits and white-fleshed fruits. The palate is lush and lively with a persistent, harmonious finish. Serve between 8 and 10°C, ideally as an aperitif with tapas or seafood.

Henriette Arcelin, 2023: monochrome as discipline

Henriette Arcelin is a French illustrator and ceramicist. For the 2023 edition, she chose to work in monochrome, drawing inspiration from the tones of the village of Gassin itself, perched above the estate's vines. This is a deliberate counter-move against the usual Provence rosé imagery, which typically plays on saturation and vivid colours.

The result is a bottle that is both sober and memorable. The wine stays true to the M profile: pearlescent pink robe, nose of tangy red fruits and exotic notes, lively and citrusy palate with a vegetal touch.

Hanna KL, 2022: botanical poetry

Korean artist Hanna KL works at the boundary between illustration and painting. For the 2022 edition, she composes an assembly of botanical and fruit forms that speak directly to the cuvée's aromatic profile. The vivacity of her colours echoes the nose's aromatic intensity, revealing tangy red fruits before evolving towards exotic fruit notes. The palate is lively and refreshing, with citrus and vegetal notes.

Léa Amati, 2021: the Saint-Tropez coastline, hour by hour

The 2021 vintage is an invitation to travel. French illustrator Léa Amati worked from the beauty of the Saint-Tropez coastline, exploring the colours, atmospheres and nuances of the Riviera's dolce far niente throughout the day. Not a postcard cliché but an attempt to capture the changing light of a Provençal day, from dawn to night. In the glass: bright robe, nose of orange peel and redcurrant, suave and fresh palate.

Mina Zosen, 2019: the programme's origins

Mina Zosen, born Mina Hamada, is a Japanese-origin artist based in Barcelona, internationally known for her large-scale murals. Her visual universe is psychedelic, primitive and deeply colourful. Her work appears on walls across Europe, in galleries, and in numerous brand collaborations, yet always maintains a strong stylistic coherence.

The choice of Mina Zosen for one of the programme's earliest editions is telling. She is an artist whose work is immediately recognisable without being reducible to a decorative style. She imposes a vision, even on a format as constrained as a wine label.

What this programme says about Minuty and Provence rosé

It is tempting to see the Minuty M artistic editions as a marketing tool. That would be reductive. The consistency over seven years, the diversity of artists chosen (London-based Italian illustrator, French ceramicist, Barcelona muralist, Korean artist), the care given to each edition — all of this goes beyond simple packaging.

This programme builds something more subtle: the idea that Provence rosé is not a generic, interchangeable wine without a story. That the M cuvée has a precise sensory personality worth translating, reinterpreting, questioning each year through an outside perspective. That is an editorial stance, and it is rare in the wine world.

The LVMH integration in 2022 provides a reference framework. LVMH finances the major artistic commissions of Louis Vuitton, runs the Fondation Louis Vuitton, and entrusts creative direction of its houses to figures like Pharrell Williams. Minuty M, at its Provençal scale, reflects the same philosophy: art is not a soul supplement, it is a way of building value and meaning.

Should you collect Minuty M editions?

The M cuvée is not a wine for ageing. Its fruity profile and freshness are designed for consumption within 12 to 18 months of bottling. Collecting the bottles for the wine inside would make no sense.

Collecting the bottles as graphic objects, however, is a coherent pursuit. Each edition is produced in limited quantities. The complete series, from 2018 to today, constitutes a visual corpus documenting the evolution of contemporary artistic sensibilities through an everyday object. It is what design enthusiasts do with Absolut bottles, sneaker lovers with Nike artist-collaboration editions. Provence rosé did not yet have this culture of serial editions. Minuty M is in the process of creating it.