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Over a lunch of roasted chicken the other day, a friend ordered a bottle of rosé. It came and was poured, though I hardly noticed, as we were thoroughly engaged in conversation. Yet at one point I was yanked out of the flow of talk and said to my friend, “Wow, this is really good rosé.” And it was: Domaine Tempier 2007 Bandol rosé. Its pink color was almost orange, and its flavors of wild strawberries tinged with a little lemon juice were long, deep, and persistent.
This delicious wine was a surprise. We tolerate a lot of bad rosé; it often gets a free pass from today’s wine drinkers. My wife’s uncle said the other day, “I love rosé and have been drinking a lot of it this summer.” I love it, too—it is the perfect summer wine. Its simplicity and cool ease are the perfect foils for the brightness, energy, and tangle of life that is summertime. And, while it’s nice that Americans have fallen for dry rosé in the past few years (for a long time it was stigmatized by a confusion with white Zinfandel, and no one drank it; now it’s on every wine list, and American vintners, emboldened by the success of European dry rosé, have started to produce it in quantity), I’m continually astonished by how much bad rosé there is in the world. It’s gotten to such a state that as simple a thing as finding a very good rosé has become a momentous occasion.
What exactly is wrong with rosé? The problem is that it is often insipid, flavorless, and marred by excessive alcohol. To be honest, I find this more in American versions. Plenty of American red wines are troubled by high alcohol, but they at least still have fruit and character. Not so the rosé. Most is made by a method called saignée, which comes from the French verb “to bleed.” Winegrowers will “bleed off” some of the juice from their red-wine fermentations into a separate tank. This serves two purposes. First, by removing some of the liquid, what’s left in the tank with the grape skins becomes more concentrated, making darker, more intense red wine. And second, the juice that was removed, which has touched the red skins for a few hours or so, is used to make rosé wine. It’s fermented, settled, bottled, and ready to drink that year. Now, if the grapes are balanced with good ripeness at moderate sugar levels, both the rosé and the red wine will turn out well. But if the grapes are overripe and saturated with excess sugar, what’s taken out of the tank for the rosé will be bland and alcoholic.
The Domaine Tempier is made from Mourvèdre, Cinsault, and Grenache, typical grapes of Southern France and the Rhône. I don’t, however, think these grapes work as well to make American rosés, because they produce wines too high in alcohol (with one exception: Tablas Creek Vineyard in Paso Robles, California, makes an unusually dark rosé based on Mourvèdre that is more ruby than pink, and is delicious). When it comes to stateside pink wine, my favorites are made from Pinot Noir, and of those there are quite a few good ones from which to choose—some of my favorites being Sinskey, Etude, Handley, and Soter. These Pinot Noir rosés have the vibrance, freshness, and juicy raspberry/strawberry brightness that just sing of summer. So don’t give your rosé a free pass. Just because it’s light and breezy doesn’t mean it should be bland and flabby.
The short answer (though, Jordan, I presume you already know what I shall write here) is, of course, that there is NOTHING wrong with rosé. The long answer is "White Zinfandel and . . . ." The even longer answer is at least "one, if not most, wine critic(s)."
Nothing is wrong with rosé. While Domaine Tempier is the "poster child" for great rosé -- especially here in the Bay Area because of...+READ
The short answer (though, Jordan, I presume you already know what I shall write here) is, of course, that there is NOTHING wrong with rosé. The long answer is "White Zinfandel and . . . ." The even longer answer is at least "one, if not most, wine critic(s)."
Nothing is wrong with rosé. While Domaine Tempier is the "poster child" for great rosé -- especially here in the Bay Area because of Kermit Lynch -- there are literally dozens of great rosés from regions in France (not just Bandol and Provence, but -- of course -- Tavel, Chinon, Marsannay, etc.), as well as Spain, Portugal, and many other regions around the world.
The IMAGE problem rosé suffers from is a major problem. Not only does it have to endure the "hangover" from all those all-too-sweet White Zinfandels from the 1970s and early 1980s, but going back farther -- into the 1960s and 1970s -- you have those "classic but over-commercialized" Portuguese rosés, Lancer's and Mateus (neither of which were EVER in the same league as a Domaine Tempier Bandol Rosé, a Domaine de la Mordorée Tavel Rosé, a Charles Jouget Chinon Rosé, etc., etc., etc.). And going even farther back in time, following World War II and continuing through the 1950s and into the 1960s, the #1 selling wine in the US used to be Almadén Grenache Rosé -- modeled upon a Tavel, but much higher in residual sugar.
And THAT is the key!
White Zin, Lancer's, Mateus, Almadén . . . ALL contain noticable levels of residual sugar. Domaine Tempier, and all the other excellent rosés mentioned above, contain slight levels of r.s. or NONE at all! Great rosés deliver excellent flavor, depth, and complexity, but are not syrupy sweet, yet much of the (American, at least) consumer market perceives that rosés ARE sweet, and thus to be avoided. Clearly this is not true, as the ever-increasing popularity of (true) rosé -- at least within major wine markets -- would indicate.
The final piece of the puzzle lies with wine critics. You have the paradoxical issue that wines are judged within their peer group, and that some types of wine are "not worthy of 100 points." One famous critic has said, for example, that Zinfandel can never receive 100 points. Well, how can that be? If it is judged within its peer group, how can the very best Zinfandel possible NOT receive 100 points???
The same is true of rosé. Rosés are rarely reviewed as a category by the influential critics, who spend time every year reviewing American Cabernet in one issue, French Bordeaux in another; French Burgundy and American Pinot; Rhônes, Australian Shiraz, American Syrah . . . how many issues are published in a year? In other words, rosés are frequently an "afterthought" -- squeezed in here and there, if at all, and often as part of a larger article (e.g.: in a major review of Southern Rhône wines, some examples of Tavel or Côtes-du-Rhône rosés might be reviewed, but clearly the focus of the critic, and the attention of the reader, is centered on the wines of Châteauneuf-du-Pape). Only when rosés get a more dedicated focus will they be taken more seriously by the public . . . .
Cheers,
Jason-COLLAPSE