A Rosé Blooms in
January
Courtesy of
30 Second Wine Advisor
By
Robin GarrI don't know about you, but when
I think about pink wine - if I think about it much at all - it
strikes me as a wine for summertime, to be sipped chilled with
alfresco fare, or by itself to take the steam out of a sultry July
afternoon.
But who drinks rosé in midwinter? Not me! Or not,
at least, until now.
The other day, I spotted a few stray leftover bottles of last
summer's best pink wine, Edmunds St. John "Bone-Jolly" Gamay Noir
Rosé, looking lonely in my neighborhood wine shop.
"Summer wine," I thought, nostalgically. I shrugged and went
home.
Couldn't get it out of my mind. Thought about it a little more. Put
my coat back on, hiked back up to the corner store and picked up a
couple of bottles.
Later on, I picked up one of my treasures and held it up to the
light, remembering how this rosé was no wimpy pale pink wine but a
cherry-red beauty almost dark enough to pass for a red. A Pinot
Noir, say.
Hmm.
Come to think about it, where is it written that a pink wine must
be served chilled? Time to challenge the conventional wisdom!
I threw together a casual dinner of beans and smoked sausage,
earthy flavors that I thought would merge well with the Gamay rosé's
Beaujolais-style fruit, and popped the wine in the fridge for just a
half-hour, no more, only long enough to bring it down toward cellar
temperature but far from cold.
The results were splendid. The wine had aged hardly at all under
its sturdy screw cap since my last tasting in April, at the peak of
springtime. Serrved just cool in January, my notes were generally
consistent, although the wine's acidity was more evident and a bare
trace of tannin was lost. Crisp, tingling acidity is no flaw in a
table wine, of course; if anything, it seemed even more
food-friendly, more like a light red than a pink.
I might not try this with a lightweight, delicate rosé. But I'd
gladly do it again with a sturdier pink wine, from Domaine Tempier
to Mas de Gourgonnier from France or Melton Rosé of Virginia from
Australia, to name a few.
Have you tried serving hearty-style rosé at warmer temperatures
as a substitute for a light red wine? Tell us about your experiences
on the WineLovers Discussion Group. Click
this link to join the conversation
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