Hot summer nights, cool summer whites (and rosés)
Hot summer nights, cool summer whites (and rosés) Part 1
As spring progresses and summer approaches many wine lovers are shedding their winter coats and transitioning from reds to rosés to whites. Unless you stay indoors all summer with the AC cranked, red wines generally make for formidable drinking during the summer months. People are spending more time outdoors soaking up the sun and the heat and are in need of something refreshing to pair with light summer fare. Crisp Rose´s and white wines are perfect for theses months and many of the seasonal dishes being prepared in cities all over the world(at least in the Northern Hemisphere). I know i for one am on that path and have no issues not looking back at the winter months. I have my summer stock in the fridge on standby ready for any meal……or maybe just a nice afternoon on the patio at some favorite haunts.
Here is a little guide and some info to help you through this summer:
Rosé:
I don’t often find my self purchasing too many pink items. Summer provides me with a perfectly good opportunity to do so. I’m not talking panties, I’m talking about what the europeans have been drinking forever: ROSÉ.
What is it?
Rosé is essentially a white wine made with red grapes. It has a little bit of color and a little bit of red flavor, but unlike a red wine, it’s perfect for ninety degree days.
There are two major ways to produce rosé. The first is a method known as Saignee (san-Yay). With saignee red grapes are crushed, placed into a fermentation vessel and the juice is allowed to sit on the skins for a matter of hours to a matter of maybe two days. The wine’s color is checked at fairly short intervals until the wine maker has the color he or she desires. When the desired color has been attained, as much as thirty percent of the juice can be drained off or separated from the skins. The juice is placed into a separate vessel and then endures a slow cool fermentation just as a white wine would until it has reached the desired level of dryness. The result is a copper to dark pink wine that should be crisp, refreshing and versatile.
What happened to the skins and the other juice?
Originally the saignee method was used to make a more concentrated red wine. By draining off the juice you attain a better juice to skin ratio which makes for a stronger, more intense and concentrated red wine. Since the red wine was the original focus of the saignee, I’m sure it took people a while to stop pouring the excess juice down the drain and use it for drinking and selling. In essence, wineries are able to craft a sellable wine from something they may have just dumped down the drain. Lucky for you, somebody figured it out.
White Zinfandel?
As much as I dislike admitting it, white zinfandel is in fact…….. rosé (of some type). As I mentioned earlier, rosé has been consumed by european communities for ages. At some point someone in America (we won’t say who) saw an opportunity and ran like hell with it. The end product was a sweet pink wine that would make anyones grandmother happy: “WHITE ZINFANDEL”. The dreadful white has been consumed by the gallons since its birth and doesn’t show any signs of death. It has single handedly created a stigma for pink wines. Most consumers see pink wine and think, “Eww sweet pink wine.” This image made even the most dry rosés a tough sell for a long time. As time passed some consumers caught on to what was really good and started buying and drinking dry rosé. After a while so much was being purchased that it became “cool” and you would hear things like, “Hey, I hear rosé is cool again,” or ” It’s making a comeback.” When did it leave? Given the wine boom of the past few years all wine has gained popularity, more people are educating themselves enough to be dangerous and many think holding a glass of wine at the bar will get them some action. Whatever it is, in conjunction with the value of the dollar, it has started driving up the price of rosé and all european wines and it sucks. Rosé is meant to be good, cheap, summer drinking wine. I wouldn’t suggest spending more than $15 on a bottle from Europe simply because you don’t need to. (Please excuse some champagne and sparkling.) For US wines you will probably be paying too much anyway because the majority of our wines are pricey anyhow. So no matter what the wine magazine tells you, don’t go spending $30 on rosé. You probably won’t be blown away and probably weren’t meant to be. Just remember they could have thrown it away just as easily as they bottled it.
If you have friends who are winemakers, my suggestion is a party. All you need is 20 people, 6 gallons of high octane rosé (un-bottled of course), some music and food is a good idea. Drink up, you will have a great night that you will remember for a very long time. Then you will thank me for it.
My Rosé rant is complete. Next we will focus on white wines for the summer in part 2.