Still rosé wines make a nifty match for celebration meals of seafood, or for just about any other menu. That's pink for you. It has the refreshing qualities of white wine, and at least some of the satisfying fruitiness of red.

But this useful duality is not to be found in all rosé. Well, to tell the truth, it is hardly to be found in any – especially among the grim Californian brands that so utterly dominate the pink market.

Look further than these for that special Valentine bottle. At the Co-op, I commend Baron de Ley Rosado 2010 at £6.99. From Rioja, a dependable source for decent rosé (or rosado as the Spanish know it), this has an eye-catching shocking-pink hue, plump ripe strawberry fruit and a nicely balancing twang of citrus acidity.

At Majestic, where the rosé range is simply enormous, my pick is a Provence wine, Berne Grande Récolte Rosé 2010 at £9.99. The south of France has been the capital of pink wine-making since long before the current craze for rosé started up, and the region still maintains a healthy prominence, quality-wise.

This one has a glowing onion-skin colour, floral perfume and ripe, juicy soft-fruit centre to the flavour, edged with an elegant dryness and freshness.

At Marks & Spencer, seek out Réserve de la Saurine Rosé 2010 at £6.49. It's from France's Rhône Valley, not far north of Provence, has a pale coral colour and a contrastingly emphatic summer-fruit juiciness. This is grown-up rosé at a good price.

Over at Tesco, Finest Navarra Rosé 2010 at £6.99 is from the region immediately east of Rioja in northeast Spain. This one is typically assertive, with a luminous cherry-magenta colour, healthy, grippy, briary fruit and dry-finishing with a little lick of sunny-sweet ripeness in the back taste.

It somehow tastes pink, and that is very much to its credit.