Rose Days

The invitation said to bring a bottle of wine, and so I’d brought two bottles, both rosés from Sonoma County: one from Matanzas Creek Winery and the other from Arrowood. I was curious to get a crowd reaction to them, and mildly amazed by the one I got. Although a side table was filled with all kinds of interesting reds and whites, everyone made a beeline for my two lone rosés. The wines were gone within minutes, leaving one guest lamenting, “I didn’t get any of the Arrowood.”
    “I’m not surprised,” said Dan Dawson, owner of Back Room Wines in Napa. “Wine-savvy people right now are fascinated with rosés.”
    Dawson holds weekly tastings in his combination wine bar and shop that are especially popular with locals. He’d just held one to sample a variety of rosés from California and France. Rosés are that hot these days, Dawson said.
    For the most part, rosés are produced by the saignée method. Red grapes are crushed and the juice is left in contact with the skins for a short time before some of it is bled off to separate tanks to ferment as a rosé, often yielding, in addition to its various hues of pink, a bright fresh aroma and taste. Other producers like Rob Crane of Crane Brothers Winery prefer the “dedicated” method, where the grapes are harvested earlier for a rosé wine, rather than a red, yielding a higher acidity. “I’m opinionated,” Crane said, “but if you’re making saignée, you’re bleeding a dark wine because you want to concentrate the flavors. The rosé is just a by-product.”
    However the winemaker chooses to make rosés, the fact remains that more are creating them—and selling out. So what’s the appeal?    
    “It’s the most versatile of all wines,” said Jeff Morgan, who, along with Daniel Moore, owns Solo Rosa, the first California winery founded on rosé wines. Morgan traces his appreciation for rosé wine back to six months he spent in Provence, where he learned to love the bone-dry rosés that pair so wonderfully with Mediterranean dishes that are rich with seafood, garlic and olive oil.
    When Morgan and Moore made 1,000 cases of rosé in 2001, Morgan said, “People thought we were out of our minds. They asked me, ‘Who’s going to drink icky pink stuff?’”
    The answer turned out to be a lot of people, and today Solo Rosa has grown to include three distinct rosés: the original, a blend of merlot and sangiovese grapes; a second made from pinot noir grapes from the Russian River area; and a third, made from syrah grapes also from Russian River, which he calls the “rosé for people who only think they like red.”
    “Daniel and I have been carrying the banner for rosés for a long time,” Morgan said, allowing that the current “tsunami” of interest is a mixed blessing: With more and more wineries venturing into rosé territory, it ramps up the competition for shelf space. In fact rosés are being made from such a range of varietals, to attempt to write about “rosé” these days is a little like writing about red or whites wines all in one group.
There are some rosés that, as Dawson noted, “If you close your eyes while you’re drinking them you’d have trouble distinguishing them from a sauvignon blanc, with all the characteristic citrus. Others have lots of berry, strawberry and cherry.”
    Swanson Vineyards in Oakville produces a luscious syrah rosé; Cartlidge & Browne in American Canyon crafts one from pinot noir. MonteVina from Amador County produces a reasonably priced rosé under the Sierra Sunrise label, and Gundlach Bundschu has a unique and delicious offering they call Tempranillo Rosé made from grapes grown in the clay and gravel soils of their Rhinefarm Vineyards.
    The Arrowood rosé that was such a hit is a blend of Rhone varietals, mourvedre, grenache and syrah. Spain is exporting some fabulous rosés made from their tempranillo and garnacha grapes, and domestic producers are using these varietals as well. The list goes on and on, and includes the widely admired and refreshing Sangiovese Rosato from Silverado Vineyards and a perennial favorite from Ménage à Trois, now owned by the Trinchero family.
    There is, Morgan noted, no simple, one size fits all descriptor these days for rosé. “That being said, rosé drinks a little like a red wine and a little like a white wine. But it pairs so brilliantly with so many foods.”
A warm weather favorite—Crane called it “the red wine drinkers’ summer wine” —it’s a refreshing wine, great with barbecues, picnics and beach parties and with Thai, Mexican and vegetarian dishes. However, Morgan also called rosé an all-season drink: Not only will it stand up to the Thanksgiving menu, with its gorgeous colors, it’s the perfect Valentine wine.
    Another plus is value. Inexpensive rosés, foreign and domestic, abound for under $20 and even under $10 a bottle.  The market that’s drinking rosé these days are “the people who know their wines,” Dawson said.
Morgan’s advice: “Don’t judge a wine by its color.” He added, “It’s great to see the most versatile wine finally getting some respect.”

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