Provence rosé used to be cheap, nasty and unfashionable. Now some of them are good, some brilliant, all are trendy and too many of them ridiculously expensive.

Such is the price of success, and is what happens when a formally obscure wine emerges as the chic tipple of the Montauk hipster/surfer set as well as their better groomed neighbors.

Now I admit there has been an accompanying, and most commendable, improvement in quality as producers realized that if they made a half way decent wine they could get serious rosé bucks for it. Yes, there’s less dreck and more good stuff around, but there is a limit as to how far you can take what is essentially a swimming pool wine, so when I see them selling for north of $30 I tend to move on.

But every summer I discover one or two Provence rosés that have both real flavor, and sell for old fashioned prices. One such gem is this weeks’ Five Star Nick’s wine of the Week the Bieler Père et Fils Rosé 2011, Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence ($12).

It might be pale salmon-pink in color but there’s nothing girly about the mineral-infused, strawberry-laced flavor.

It is everything a summer rosé should be, and will do equally well as an aperitif before lunch, or with clams on the beach in the evening, or at the dinner table with grilled swordfish. But the key here is it’s the retro nature of its price. I really didn’t think you could find rosé this good for this price in these days of the wine’s ever ascending popularity.

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