There is a Good Reason These Rosés are Superior
The Wine Country has always taken pride in our rosé selection. Even before influencers discovered Provence rosé in the Hamptons, before Brad and Angelina had invested in a rosé winery, before every wannabe winery jumped on the pink bandwagon, we were trumpeting the virtues of dry rosé.
But not any old rosé.
The secret to our success was our early recognition that here in Southern California where could can dine al fresco in April through October, where our Mediterranean climate matched our newfound love of Mediterranean cuisine, we found our rosé North Star in France’s Côte de Provence, where the imports provided pale pink escitement that was zingy and tangy. They tasted as alive and fresh-tasting as the Niçoise salads on our plates.
If it wasn’t refreshing foremost, we wouldn’t carry it.
A lot of California rosés at the time were made in the saignée fashion, having been bi-products of full-throttle red wines, bleeding off the tinted juice to make the remaining red wine more concentrated. If the red wine was destined to be 15% alcohol, the rosé was also 15% alcohol. The drank more like red wine than pink, and worst of all, they gave us headaches in the summer sun. South of France versions, on the other hand, did not. In fact, they were so inviting, so easy to swallow that one bottle was never enough for two people.
At first, it wasn’t an easy sell. I’ve often spoken about our first rosé tasting in 1996 where 13 people showed up. Given the influence of bad California rosé going back to the 1950s, the sweet and nauseous Portuguese imports Mateus and Lancer’s in the 1970s and finally the innocuous, omnipresent wines called White Zinfandel in the 1980s, it was understandable that the majority of our customers were treating pink wine as if they were the measles in West Texas.
But I knew differently. In the years immediately before I opened The Wine Country, I visited France as the Southern California distributor of Kermit Lynch Imports where I encountered a style of rosé I had never experienced. It wasn’t sweet and it wasn’t heavy. It was crave-able, and I couldn’t get enough of it. Not only did they come from Provence, but to the west in Languedoc and sometimes in Spain with a similar freshness profile.
One year long ago, our friend Jack McLaughlin introduced us to an authentic Grand Aïoli, the Provence feast where everything from chicken and lamb to mussels and potatoes was slathered in freshly homemade garlic mayonnaise. It made our rosés open up and display fruitiness that mere apéro consumption never revealed. This was revelatory, and the inspiration for our annual South of France Rosé Fest tasting the first Saturday in June, which has become our most heavily attended tasting of the year.
Ever since, word got out that there was a perfect Southern California summer wine being touted at The Wine Country, because sales soared and legions of happy customers have flocked back to fill their shopping carts with mixed cases of delightful rosés. Our best suppliers got the word, too, because they began showing the previous fall’s rosé releases as early as the following January, giving us first pick of the best wines available.
We also discovered classic rosés from the Rhone Valley, even though they were a bit heavier in body. The best, coming from Tavel and the Cotes du Rhone, still passed our freshness test or we wouldn’t bring them in the store.
Much to our surprise, we discovered refreshing rosés in other regions, too—from Sancerre in the Loire Valley to Pinot Noir rosés in Germany. (In my experience, these cold climate wines performed better with salmon and turkey than they did with herbed mussels and aioli, but succeeded equally well as the south of France versions when served as aperitifs.
Up to now this year, where the weather has sputtered, with the marine layer casting its gloomy and chilly gray that matched our mood, we’ve been reaching for rosés the moment the clouds part and the sun casts its warmth over us. As I’ve written before, these types of rosés are fitting beverages for us because Southern California is a culture of the outdoors, entertaining friends in our patios and participating in get-togethers on boats and beaches, concerts under the stars and picnics everywhere we can unfurl a blanket and soak in the joy of the season.
Rosé is a wine for the light. Hot spells in November don’t have the same magic as the season upon us because it gets dark early. When I come home from work and it’s still light outdoors, that’s when I reach in the refrigerator, pull out a dry rosé from the south of France, pop the cork and shake the road dust off.
Life is good.
Today you can still discover great tasting rosés in our rosé mountain just as you enter our front door.
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