When my husband, Peter, and I were recently invited
over by longtime friends Phil and Pat Wheat for a glass of wine at sunset,
we accepted eagerly. The Wheats’ modern home is situated on Lake
Springfield’s eastern shore, so gorgeous sunsets are practically
guaranteed. Pat is a talented interior designer, and usually when we visit
she’s added something new to their already spectacularly lovely home.
This time the latest improvement was Phil’s, though Pat undoubtedly
had a hand in its creation: a climate-controlled wine cellar and tasting
room, complete with a computer dedicated solely to the cellar’s
inventory, food and wine pairings, and other wine-related topics.
A recent trip to California’s Sonoma Valley
transformed Phil from someone who merely enjoyed wine into a passionate
enthusiast, so we wanted to bring something special and a bit different.
Handing over a bottle of Domaine Tempier’s Bandol Rosé, I said
that it’s a wine we especially enjoy in summer and that it’s
regarded by many experts as the world’s best rosé. Pat said, a
bit dubiously, “But it’s sweet, right?”
It’s an all-too-common American misperception
— even among those who routinely drink wine — that rosés
are uniformly sweet. This is largely because of the ocean of white
Zinfandel that began washing over the U.S. in the 1960s. White Zinfandel (a
misnomer; white Zins are always pink) came about by accident. The Zinfandel
varietal is one of California’s oldest; in fact, for a while it was
even thought to be native. Sophisticated DNA has proved otherwise.
According to Dr. Carole Meredith, professor of viticulture and enology at
the University of California, Davis, Zinfandel is identical to the Italian
varietal Primitivo and has been traced back to parents in Croatia, Plavac
Mali and Dobriãiç, thought to have been brought to Italy by
monks. In the ’60s a new generation of vintners in California, which
had previously been primarily a source of generic jug wines, began making
wines that would soon compete favorably with Europe’s finest. They
planted acres of Zinfandel grapes, but American consumers had yet to
develop a taste for robust Zinfandel wines. Sutter’s is generally
credited (or blamed) for creating white Zinfandel. Vintners there crushed
Zinfandel grapes and let the skins have brief contact with the juice (a
method used for almost all rosés) and heavily chapitalized it
(adding sugar during fermentation), which resulted in a light, sweet wine
perfectly suited to soda-drinking Americans. Soon “white”
Zinfandel was outselling red Zin six to one.
Almost all wine experts disdain white Zinfandel. An
exception is David Rosengarten, whose Rosengarten
Report has been hailed as “the best
food and wine newsletter in America.” To Rosengarten, white
Zinfandel’s appeal is “not in my taste for great wine.
It’s in my good sense in matching wine with food. The downside of
white Zinfandel is that it doesn’t have any Zinfandel flavor. In
fact, it doesn’t have too much flavor at all — just a mildly
pleasant kind of generalized fruit quality. And that, to me, is its virtue
when I’m planning menus. There is a great deal of modern [often
ethnic] food that is on the sweet side. I say, if the food is a little
sweet, let the wine be a little sweet.”
Much as I respect Rosengarten (I’ve used his
cookbooks and newsletters for years), I disagree with him on this. White
Zinfandels are just too insipid for me. That said, I love rosés. In
fact, if I were forced to pick just one style and color of wine that I
could have for the rest of my life in all situations, it would probably be
dry rosé because it’s so versatile. I’m not alone in
this: Renowned importer Kermit Lynch says that if he could have just one
wine in his cellar he’d choose Domaine Tempier’s rosé.
Like Rosengarten, I tend to judge wines mainly on the basis of how well
they match with food. Fortunately a host of wonderfully flavorful
rosés — most completely dry and some barely off-dry —
pair beautifully with an astonishingly wide variety of food; unfortunately,
that white Zin stigma has made many American wine enthusiasts avoid them.
That’s not the case in other parts of the
world, where good rosés are routinely consumed. “We drank
rosé all the time at home,” says the Corkscrew Wine
Emporium’s Danielle Anderson, a native of Mauritius, a tropical
island in the Indian Ocean that was a French protectorate for years before
passing to the British and finally achieving independence. “Most of
us weren’t very familiar with [good] rosés before we started
working here,” adds the Corkscrew’s Michael DeBeaulieu,
“but [Corkscrew owner] Geoff [Bland] is real rosé fan; he
introduced us to them, and now we love them. In fact, I had a rosé
last night with a salad for dinner.”
Dry rosés are common on the Iberian Peninsula
(Spain and Portugal), in southern France, and, to a somewhat lesser extent,
in Italy. Wineries in North and South America, New Zealand, Australia, and
South Africa are producing excellent rosés as well. I’ve
recently been enjoying rosés from Chile and Argentina made from a
French varietal, Malbec, that’s particularly at home in South
America.
Some think rosés are a compromise between red
and white wines. There’s a degree of truth to that, but it’s a
compromise that’s a virtue rather than a vice. The “red wine
with meat and white wine with chicken and fish” dictum is a huge
oversimplification, but it does contain a degree of truth. The tannins
found in red wine, which come primarily from the grapes’ skins, pair
beautifully with rich and fatty things like steaks, braised meats,
butter-based sauces, and even fish such as salmon. Some reds, particularly
many of the big, powerful wines beloved by wine guru Robert Parker and his
disciples, are prima donnas that overwhelm practically any food. In my
opinion, at least, such reds are best enjoyed by themselves or with very
simple accompaniments.
White wines, on the other hand, have few or no
tannins but usually a higher acidity level that cleanses the palate,
readying it for the next bite and allowing subtle and delicate flavors to
shine.
Good rosés combine the best of both, making
them versatile and food-friendly. The most successful are made from red
grape varieties that are naturally moderately to relatively highly acidic;
the abbreviated time the crushed skins and juice are in contact adds a hint
of tannins.
Most rosés are moderately priced, though there
are exceptions — sadly, the weak U.S. dollar has made Domaine
Tempier’s rosé almost twice as expensive in the short time
since we visited the Wheats. Rosés come in various styles (depending
on the grape varietal) and a wide range of colors (depending on the length
of time the skins have contact with the juice), from palest blush to a deep
pink that could be mistaken for red wine in low light.
I enjoy rosés throughout the year, but
especially in summer. They’re the perfect wines to pair with grilled
steak or fish, barbecued ribs, or to just enjoy sipping under the
sprinkler.
Contact Julianne Glatz at realcuisine.jg@gmail.com.
This article appears in Jul 24-30, 2008.
