It's not a 'serious' wine, people say. Or it's too sweet. Or—the ultimate cork stopper—it's 'for women only.'
Well, tell that to all those hairy, beefy truck drivers in southern France, where rosé wines are the wines of summer, the perfect quaff to wash down hearty lunches of cold roast chicken and salads made with beans or rice or bread soaked in olive oil and vinegar.
We get most of our lopsided notions about dry rosé wines from the uniquely American phenomenon called white zinfandel, a so-called 'blush' wine because the red zinfandel grapes are crushed only just enough to tincture the wine a slight pink—and fermented only just enough so that a marked sweetness remains in the finished wine. (I think they're called 'blush' wines because they're too embarrassed to be real wines.)
On the other side of the world, especially in France and northern Spain, pink wines are dry, fat with flavor and sport squeegee-like acidity. They're food wines, above all, and they're on every table come summertime.
Dry rosés can be made in one of two ways. The first method, like making white zinfandel, is to crush red grapes and ferment them only long enough to bleed a small amount of color from their skins. In the case of grenache, for example, the most popular red grape for producing rosé in both Spain and France, the initial skin contact lasts 8-10 hours. The skins are then removed and the winemaker ferments the juice to dryness.
A variation on this is called saignée, which means 'bled' in French. Here, the winemaker crushes a vat full of red wine grapes, then shortly thereafter bleeds off a measurable amount of the grape juice that has been turned pink. That wine is then fermented in a separate vat into a dry rosé. (The initial vat makes for a more concentrated red wine because there is a greater ratio of skins and pulp to juice than there would otherwise be without the bleeding off.)
The second, and not often-used, method is to add a small amount of red wine to an already fermented white wine, coloring it to the desired degree.
In any case, dry rosés are like and unlike a white wine. They refresh, but they have more flavor. For those reasons, always buy the youngest dry rosé that you can find.
And, once you have one with most any summer meal, you'll go back for more, again and again.
The French make the best dry rosés in the world. Here are some tasting notes of several, listed by price. They're all available at Sam's Wines & Spirits, 1720 N. Marcey St., 312-664-4394.
2002 Domaine Houchart, Cotes de Provence ($6): Very light body; salmon-colored; pronounced taste of minerals in finish.
2002 La Vieille Ferme, Cotes de Ventoux ($7): Excellent buy; juicy; very slight sweet finish.
2002 Chateau Grande Cassagne, Costiéres de Nimes ($8): Buckets of flavors of dried cherries and strawberry leather; screamingly dry.
2002 Mas des Bressades, Costiéres de Nimes ($9): Coppertone color; medium bodied; soft and restrained.
2002 Macon Igé, Francoise Fichet ($10): All gamay; ruby-red cast; extremely dry, with bracing acidity.
2002 Domaine de Fondreche, Cotes de Ventoux ($10): Light, as rosés go, with easygoing flavors of strawberries and Bing cherries.
2002 Chateau Mourgues du Gres, Fleur d'Eglantine, Costiéres de Nimes ($10): Super delicate and restrained; coral color; would be great with fish.
2002 Bourgogne rosé, R.Dubois ($11): Fantastic flavors of dried cherries and red berries; richly textured and full-bodied; squeegee-like acidity; nice coral cast.
2002 Mas de Gourgonnier, Les Baux de Provence ($11): Restrained tyle; not much flavor.
2002 Chateau Mourgues du Gres, Les Galets Rosés, Costieres de Nimes ($12): A light red, from appearances, with loads of berry and cherry flavor and great length for a rosé.
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