2004 Cousiño-Macul Doña Isidora Riesling

I decided a couple months ago or so that I wanted to learn more about Rieslings. It was actually some of the sweeter, German -style Rieslings that really got me started on wine in the first place several years ago. I think as I learned more about different wines and transformed into a red wine drinker, I just unconsciously presumed the stuff I started on had to have been inferior, and I have sort of ignored it ever since.

Well, a couple weeks ago I started reading Andrea Immer Robinson's Great Wine Made Simple. As described by the subtitle of her book, Straight Talk from a Master Sommelier, Andrea Immer Robinson really knows her stuff and is completely unpretentious as she walks you through a series of several recommended tastings meant to help you develop your palate.

The first of these tastings is the "Big Six" - six grapes that represent the "guts" of about 80% of the quality wine sold in the U.S. There are three white grapes and three red grapes, each grape also representing the range of body (light, medium and full) of each type. In order of increasing body, the white grapes are Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay; the red grapes are Pinot Noir, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon.

When I read that, I thought"Hmmm... I've had several wines made from all but one of those grapes within the last couple of years - Riesling. Am I missing out here?" As Robinson says, "First, ditch your snobbery about Riesling. A lot of people hear Riesling and think 'sweet' and 'no thanks.' My theory is that as soon as people spot the traditional long, thin bottle, they have flashbacks to Liebfraumilch. But about the only thing great Rieslings have in common with Liebfraumilch is its traditional home base - Germany."

See, I told you she was unpretentious.

Anyway, that right there was enough to convince me that I needed to widen the (admittedly limited) horizons of my white wine world, and start tasting some Rieslings. With the hot and humid DC summers just right around the corner, when drinking my favorite red wines becomes all but unbearable, now seemed like the perfect time to start my exploration. So I did something I don't normally do - I bought this bottle of wine from the cornerstore "beermart" while picking up some Cinco de Mayo cervezas.

Why You Shouldn't Buy Wine at a "BeerMart"
This was probably a mistake for several reasons, but the biggest one was how the wine had been stored. Being mainly a beer store, they have tons of beer-filled refrigerators which noisily and continuously remove heat from within the coolers and pump it out into the store. I'm just taking a guess here, but this heating effect probably keeps the temperature in this small shop in the upper 70s - not exactly ideal storage conditions for wine. Also, being mainly a beer store, they a) had a very poor wine selection, and b) almost never sold any wine - thus the bottles they did have had probably stewed there on those shelves for some time without being replaced by new stock.

All of this is to say that I probably didn't exactly "set myself up for success" for my re-entry into the world of Riesling. And when I first cracked open this 2004 Cousiño-Macul "Doña Isidora" Chilean Riesling, I must say I was not impressed. Since Kris and I had folks coming over to our place for a Cinco de Mayo BBQ, I didn't have adequate time to chill the wine and attempted the "bottle in the freezer" trick which never seems to work out well. It was still far too warm when I first opened it, and therefore quite harsh. It was creamier than I was expecting, and had a bitterness to the finish which was not particularly pleasant. Oh well - time for a Negra Modelo, and the Riesling was pumped and put into the fridge.

The next night, my wife and I were having a grilled lemon pepper (wild-caught) salmon, so I figured I'd break it out and try it again. Having been in the fridge all day, it would now be at a much more agreeable temperature which I hoped would rectify the many faults from my previous failed tasting attempt.

Wine in Chile
But first, let me tell you a bit about Cousiño-Macul. C-M grows the grapes used for their Riesling in the Maipo Valley of Chile. Chile is in some ways the world's most ideal location for making consistent wines. Sandwiched by the Pacific Ocean and the Andes, it is protected from many of the pests that plague other vineyards of the world, most notably Phylloxera. Phylloxera attacks the roots of the Vitis vinifera vine, and completely decimated the world's wine grape vines in the late 1800s. It was only by grafting Vitis vinifera to native American Vitis labrusca rootstock, which was resistant to Phylloxera, that the wine industry was finally able to recover. But Phylloxera never made it down to Chile, and thus grapes in this region are mostly pure, ungrafted Vitis vinifera.

Another advantage that Chile's winemaking regions have in terms of making consistent wines is that they are very arid (receiving less than 12 inches of rain per year), relying upon irrigation. Thus heavy rainfalls late in the season can't "dilute" the ripening grapes which typically makes for thinner wine. Simultaneously, these arid regions are virtually immune from drought as snow melt from the Andes provides a plentiful source for their irrigation.

Now, on to the wine
We selected this wine-on-a-whim because we have thoroughly enjoyed Cousiño-Macul's Antiguas Reservas Cabernet Sauvignon (although my favorite Chilean wine has been the Carmenère - more on Chilean Carmenères in a later post!) This 2004 Cousiño-Macul "Doña Isidora" Riesling had a syrupy golden-straw color to it. What surprised me about the taste of this Riesling is that although tart, there was also what I think of as creaminess to it. I was definitely not expecting to find that in a Riesling. This leads me to believe that perhaps I confuse body with creaminess, because the tasting notes on Cousiño-Macul's website indicate that there was no malolactic fermentation (a secondary fermentation that changes the tarter malic acids into softer, creamier lactic acids), no aging in oak, nothing that would impart that cream.

So I wasn't that happy with this Riesling as a sipping wine. However, it paired quite nicely with our salmon. It's citrusy, almost pineapple flavor with minerally finish cut through the oily fish very nicely, cleansing the palate. Purchased for just $9 at the beermart, I probably can't expect much more from it than that.

Final recommendation
The last Riesling I tasted was an Alsatian Riesling at the FineWine.com tasting in April. That one was really good, and probably set my expectations a little high for this significantly cheaper Chilean Riesling. Before that, I can't even remember the last time I had Riesling. Thus I have a very limited mental Riesling library with which to compare the Doña Isidora. All I can say is that the Chilean Riesling worked out OK with dinner, but was nothing spectacular. I'm still going to move ahead with my plan to try more Rieslings this summer, but would love to get some suggestions so that my next experience is a better one!

Footnote
Kris and I are going to be starting in on the "Great Wine Made Simple" suggested palate-developing tastings, beginning with the Big Six tasting in two weeks! I have a Domaine Trimbach Riesling from Alsace slated for that event - I'm hoping to go 2 for 2 on good Alsatian Rieslings! I'm excited to take a more directed approach to improving my palate, so I'll let you know how it goes!

1998 Rideau Syrah

Rideau Vineyards is one of my all-time favorite California wineries. Located in the heart of "Sideways" country (aka the Santa Ynez Valley) up the road from Kalyra, Rideau makes some absolutely spectacular Rhone-style wines. It was to the Rideau Vineyards cellar club that I bid the most tearful farewell when we moved from Santa Barbara to Maryland and thus fell under the jurisdiction of the Orwellian, asinine Montgomery County still profiting hand-over-fist from Prohibition-era liquor control laws.

But I digress.

Suffice it to say, their wine simply rocks. Most bottles are well outside my "everyday wines" price range, typically costing between $30-$50 a bottle. But if you're going to splurge, Rideau is the place to do it. Every single bottle of red I've ever tasted from them has been nothing short of stunning (a lot more stunning than my bottle photography skills - I clearly still have issues taking a decent pic at night!).

Since Rideau only sells their wines from the winery or via their website, my once hefty supply has been slowly dwindling since our California Exodus. With the consumption of this Syrah, I am down to but a single bottle - a 2000 Syrah/Mourvedre blend available only to Cellar Club members that the tasting room staff simply referred to as "liquid gold". It is *so* good in fact, they had a hard time holding my bottles for me at the winery for an extra month as I was unable to make it up there upon their release for pickup. Since the wine was completely sold out, they told me they were sorely tempted by my two bottles staring at them for a month, but they stoically resisted.

You're probably expecting tasting notes for this wine, but I didn't take any. I clearly love learning more about wine, trying new styles, finding new favorites, and telling people what I've discovered. But with wine this good, I just want to savor it. I want to turn off the analytical portion of my brain and just let the flavor sensations wash over me without applying any sensory filters. I don't want to think about it, I just want to experience it.

I think it is important to allow ourselves that luxury upon occasion, just like it is important to allow ourselves to enjoy beauty wherever we may find it during our regular routines. I just read an interesting article in the Washington Post about a musician playing his violin at a DC Metro station during rush hour. Metro stations have not traditionally allowed musicians to play in them, and hidden cameras were installed to record the reactions of commuters to the new addition. The thing is, this was no ordinary musician - this was Joshua Bell, a virtuoso violinist playing a 300-year old Stradivarius violin valued at over $3.5 million. The experiment was set up by the Washington Post to test public perception and priorities - "In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?"

The reaction? Of the 1,097 people who passed by during his 43-minute "performance", only 7 of them stopped for any length of time. Bell, used to playing sold-out concert halls where the "cheap seats" start off around $100, was almost completely ignored. I think this is a telling statement of American values. Obviously, context matters here - people were not expecting to hear beautiful music in a Metro station, so they weren't actively listening for it. But the fact that only 7 people even bothered to try really makes you question our cultural trajectory.

Most wine drinkers, I think, are hedonists to some degree. We find pleasure in the boundless variety of scents and tastes wrapped up in each bottle, obviously, but we also find as much or more pleasure in sharing that bottle amongst good company. We realize that our quest for good wine is actually only a part of a much larger quest for "the good life". Wine seems to grant us permission to slow down, relax, and let that right half of our brain run the show for a little while. This is something that is becoming increasingly more difficult to do, as evidenced by the Washington Post musician experiment.

So I say grab your significant other and/or friends, pull out one of those bottles you've been "saving for a special occasion", pop it open, and enjoy. I bet you'll find it was the perfect occasion, after all.

2004 Concannon Petite Sirah

There were several reasons why Kris and I cracked open a bottle of an old favorite, Concannon's Petite Sirah, tonight.

One reason was that Wannabe Wino's description of her recent "wine find", Mounts Family Winery (in particular their Petite Sirah), had me hankering for one myself. Another reason is that Concannon bottles have a nifty raised relief image on them (barely visible in the photo), and I was just commenting yesterday on how I was a sucker for such "bottle dressing". But the *real* reason I wanted this PS tonight is that yesterday's tasting of the Cèdre Cahors Malbec/Merlot blend oddly reminded me very much of the taste of Petite Sirah.

Thanks to my trusty Vacu Vin, I knew that the remainder of last night's Cahors would still be in prime condition to taste side-by-side with this "fresh" bottle from our collection. Would my "wine memory" of Concannon's Petite Sirah be correct - would there be similarities between tonight's bottle and last night's Cahors Malbec/Merlot blend?

Petite Sirah
Before we get to the tasting notes and answer that question, I want to take a look at the Petite Sirah grape, and at Concannon's role in popularizing this interesting varietal. As I mentioned in my previous tasting notes of a Bogle Petite Sirah last month, Petite Sirah is a completely different grape from Syrah/Shiraz (those two are the same grape, by the way). So while Petite Sirah sounds like Syrah, they are in fact completely different grapes. Petite Sirah is believed to be a cross between Syrah and Peloursin, also known as Durif after its creator, Dr. Francois Durif, who performed the cross in the late 1800s. So like Syrah/Shiraz, Petite Sirah/Durif are also synonyms for the same grape.

Petite Sirah (or "PS" as fans like to call it) even has its own "support group" aimed at marketing this misunderstood grape. The name? PS - I Love You. "Not just for love letters anymore!" They have done a great job at coming up with this extensive history of the Petite Sirah grape. One thing that jumped out to me from this list was a news article from 1890 written to describe the "Million Grape Cuttings" sent from Concannon to the Mexican Government for experimental planting throughout Mexico. One of the grapes mentioned by name in this 1890 article is Petite Sirah. Again, in 1904 there is a historical document from Concannon, written in French, presumably to obtain Petite Sirah/Durif cuttings from France for planting in California's Livermore Valley.

The Livermore Valley
"The Livermore Valley? Where's that?" you may be asking yourself. Located just past the verdant green (in the rainy winter season) rolling hills of San Francisco's East Bay, the Livermore Valley may not immediately spring to your mind as a premier California wine-growing region. But that was not always the case. As detailed in a recent Vinography post,
the Livermore Valley was once one of the most well-known wine growing areas in the United States, having as many acres under vine as the mighty Napa. Early pioneers of California's viticultural heritage compared the Livermore Valley, with its ancient stream beds and gravely soils, to Bordeaux's famous Graves region (whose very name means simply "gravel"). These well-drained soils were thought to be the ideal location for reproducing Bordeaux's success in California.

But while Napa's renown grew, Livermore's gradually faded with few of the original vineyards recovering from the effects of Prohibition. One of the few wineries that *did* manage to pull through was Concannon. Founded by James Concannon in 1883, they proudly proclaim "America's First Petite Sirah" right on the wine label.

Tasting Notes
The Concannon Petite Sirah displays the characteristic inky ruby purple color of a PS (Dark & Delicious, says PS I Love You). It has a very fruity nose of jammy blackberries. Big and juicy, the berries follow through to the palate with hints of chocolate and the chalky tannins which I also associate with Petite Sirahs. It was this chalky tannin structure that made me think of Petite Sirahs will tasting last night's Cahors blend.

So how does this Petite Sirah compare to the Cahors Malbec/Merlot blend? They *did* have several similarities - I had my wife taste them blind, and she initially picked the Cahors as the Petite Sirah. As the Concannon opened up, that fruit really started jumping out at which point distinguishing the two was far simpler. However, the serious dose of tannins serves to keep all that fruit in check, making for an overall balanced and enjoyable wine.

If you like big, fruit-forward reds and enjoy playing with the tannins on your tongue, then the Concannon Petite Sirah is for you. If you like a little less fruit, a little more spice and slightly smoother yet still big and chalky tannins, then I'd go for the Chateau du Cèdre Héritage Cahors. Both are excellent wines, and for around $12, you can't go wrong!

2005 Chateau du Cèdre Héritage Cahors

The temperature dropped a bit tonight, making my thoughts turn from rosés back to more familiar territory - big, bold reds. Tonight's bottle is the first we've opened from our "Meet the French Winemakers" winetasting event at FineWine.com in Gaithersburg, MD that I wrote up last month - yay! The bottle was purchased for $12 (although it usually goes for $15).

First off - a warning: this post is really long. If you're interested in my tidbits of wine trivia, read on! I am always fascinated to learn more about the grapes, regions, etc of the wines I drink, so I often feel like writing about them. However, if the wine geek thing isn't for you and you're mainly looking for my tasting notes from this bottle, just skim all the way down to the bottom.

Cahors
This wine comes from the Cahors region of Southwestern France. Being a French wine ignoramus, I had never heard of Cahors before. It made me feel a little better to flip through some wine books and note that Cahors doesn't even show up in the index of most of them, and when it does show up in the text it's mainly as a footnote or minor reference. So Cahors appears to be an under-appreciated (or at least under-publicized) winemaking region.

Despite this, apparently Cahors has a long winemaking history, and centuries ago wines from Cahors surpassed the popularity of its more famous neighbor to the East, Bordeaux. Even the Romans partook of the "black wines" of Cahors, so named because wine from this region has historically been very deep and dark in color, characteristics of its major grape varietals Malbec (also known here as Auxerrois or Côt) and the more obscure Tannat. In fact, the parade of little-known grape varietals doesn't stop there - Negrette, Mauzac, and Fer Servadou have also been planted in Cahors for centuries. But Malbec is the true star of Cahors - in fact, all wines from Cahors must legally contain at least 70% Malbec. The balance is usually made up with Merlot, or sometimes Tannat, although some of the more unusual varieties may also make their way into the mix.

First tangent of this post - Hillsborough
What I find most interesting about this list of little-known varietals is that two of them, Tannat and Fer Servadou, are planted and used in blends from one of my favorite Virginia wineries, Hillsborough. I attended a barrel-blending seminar at Hillsborough once, and we were able to sample each of these varietals (as well as the more familiar Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot) straight from the barrel, before they had been blended together into the "gemstone" wines that Hillsborough produces. It was very interesting to see what specific qualities each of these grapes might bring to the final blend; we then measured out the various varietals in the approximate proportions they would be present in the final blends, and got a pre-taste of what the final product would be. Fun!

Second quasi-tangent of the post - Malbec
I have somewhat recently become very interested in the Malbec grape. This has coincided precisely with my somewhat recent interest in South American wines, as Malbec has found a near-perfect climatological fit with the Mendoza region of Argentina. In fact, I thought that Malbec was all but extinct in its native France - it is apparently something of a Bordeaux reject, having once been more popular but now grown only sparsely. However, to paraphrase Mark Twain: "the reports of Malbec's demise in France have been greatly exaggerated"; Malbec is still very much alive and doing quite well in the next region over, Cahors.

Wine temperature and decanting tangent
Since I have recently been experimenting with wine temperature for the recent rosé tastings, I decided to give it a go for a red. Traditional wisdom says that reds are supposed to be consumed at "room temperature". But whose room? Located where? Turns out that this idea of room temperature probably originated in drafty old chateaus, where "room temperature" was most likely 65°F, rather than the 70°F or so that most folks keep their homes at today. The end result is that most of us probably drink red wine slightly too warm (and whites and rosés slightly too cold due to refrigeration) . This isn't usually a big deal, but can come into play if the wine is particularly big and "hot" (high alcohol).

When I first popped open this bottle and took a whiff, I could feel the prickly sensation of alcohol interfering with my appreciation of the wine's aromas. Upon tasting, I thought the wine had a little extra burn as well. After probing the bottle with my wine thermometer, turns out the wine was at about 69°F. Although only 13% alcohol, I figured chilling it a couple of degrees in the fridge couldn't hurt - the lower temp should reduce some of the volatilization of alcohol, masking that "prickly effect" a bit. I took it out after about 5 minutes or so, and the wine had dropped down to 64°F. The "pricklies" had now disappeared from both the nose and taste - placebo effect? Maybe - we left my wife's glass of wine out for the five minutes we were chilling the bottle, and her glass seemed to have mellowed quite a bit as well. So did the temperature matter? Maybe not.

This lead us to thinking that perhaps we should decant it. First off, a confession - my wife and I are decanting junkies. Initially I thought decanting was only for presentation, or for removing sediment from really old, expensive wine - the kind Kris and I would rarely if ever be opening at our dinner table. So what was the point? I have since discovered that decanting is so much more than that, and I'd say we decant the majority of red wines we drink. Decanting can make a young wine better, and a good older wine great.

The main purpose of decanting is to allow oxygen to contact the wine, opening it up and softening it a bit. This is especially the case for wines with a lot of tannins (such as this Cahors). Sure, you could also simply open the bottle and let it "breathe" for a while, or swirl it around in your glass and wait a while - a decanter just makes this happen a whole lot faster as it increases the surface area dramatically.

So I strongly recommend you experiment with decanting. My wife and I would pour one glass straight from the bottle, and pour a second glass from the decanter and serve them "blind" to each other to see if we could tell the difference. In some cases, decanting did virtually nothing for the wine. In most cases, there was a slight noticeable improvement in the flavor and texture of the wine, but in a few cases the change was so dramatic it was like having two completely separate wines. After a while, we learned to identify which wines tasted like they could benefit from decanting, and have found that our gut feeling on this is now usually correct. (Just FYI - the decanter in the picture is our "mini-decanter" (375 mL) - gets the job done but doesn't take up as much space on the table as our regular-sized decanter (750mL))

Finally, the tasting!
Having exhausted my supply of tangents for the evening, I'm ready to get down to business. The 2005 Chateau du Cèdre Héritage Cahors had a nose of dark cherries and plums. Had I been blind tasting this wine, my first thoughts would have immediately been "Wow - Argentinian!" I now know that I thought this because this Cahors is made from a blend 90% Malbec and 10% Merlot, and Malbec is something of an Argentinian specialty.

The defining characteristic of this wine is its big, smooth tannins. I'm a big fan of tannins, and they were well balanced in this wine, so I very much enjoyed it. The tannins here were also somewhat chalky, and the overall effect of the dark fruit and tannins reminded me of bitter chocolate. Have you ever tasted dark chocolate with a large percentage of cacao, say 75% or more? That almost dusty feeling it leaves in your mouth is what I'm talking about here. This may not sound pleasant, but in this case it's a good thing!

Overall Recommendation
I would definitely recommend you check this wine out. I really enjoy this style of wine, and it's kind of fun to taste wine from a lesser-known region of France. Plus, because of its relative obscurity, it seems that there are some good Cahors wine deals to be found. At $12, I thought this wine had an excellent quality-to-price ratio (at the regular $15 price, it would still have a pretty good QPR). I'm also happy to have discovered another region outside of Mendoza, Argentina producing quality Malbecs. Actually, that would be an interesting Wine Blogging Wednesday - the Malbecs of Cahors vs. the Malbecs of Mendoza!

Final Tangent - Valentré Bridge
I have to sneak in one more tangent. Another thing I liked about this wine was the bottle. The green glass contains the raised relief image of a very cool looking bridge all around the bottom of the bottle. I discovered that this bridge is the Valentré Bridge, symbol of the town of Cahors, that was begun in 1308 and finished in 1378.

I must admit, I'm a total sucker for this sort of thing, having always loved the raised Papal emblem on the necks of bottles of Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine. I wish this practice would become more popular!

Catavino Virtual Rosé Tasting!

I have been looking forward to this tasting ever since I heard about Catavino's Virtual Rosé Tasting a week or so ago. Ryan and Gabriella at Catavino want to encourage folks to explore wines of the "Iberian Peninsula" - for the geographically-challenged, this means Spain and Portugal. The rules that Catavino set for this virtual tasting are pretty simple - pick out a Spanish or Portuguese rosé, and compare it to a rosé from virtually anywhere else. You don't even need a blog to join in on the fun - you can post your comments directly to Catavino's forum!

I chose to compare a Spanish Navarra rosado with a French Côte-du-Rhône rosé, mainly because I conveniently had both wines in my collection - no need to drive to Virginia! I also thought: Northern Spain, Southern France - the wines should be similar, yes?

The Spanish wine was a 2006 Viña Rubican Rosado from the Navarra region of Northern Spain. According to Catavino, Spain classifies rosé wines into two categories: rosados and claretes. Rosados are apparently what we typically think of as rosés - light to dark pink in color. Claretes aren't so much a rosé as a very light red wine. How does light red differ from dark pink? I have no idea - but now you know what I know.

The French wine was a 2006 Domaine Guy Mousset Cuvée Réservée Rosé from Côtes-du-Rhône. I would love to give you more information about it (love to find out more myself!) but I have the hardest time finding out anything about specific French wines on the 'Net. With any American wine, Google to the rescue - I can learn what varietals are in it, probably even find tasting notes and technical data from the winery. But with the French wines - nothing. The only link I could find to this wine is on Cellar Tracker. So, I'm not even sure which grapes this wine was made from. I see this as yet another hurdle French wine has in gaining widespread acceptance with American wine drinkers, particularly younger wine drinkers. We demand more information about our products, and the French wine labels and limited online data are unable to satisfy our demands.

Anyway, on to the good part - the tasting!

I didn't even need to open the bottles to immediately notice a distinct difference between the two: the color. Here are two different shots that highlight this - the French rosé has a light salmon color, while the Spanish rosado has a deeper, redish-purple color.

OK, so I probably should have rotated that top picture so that the rosé was always on the left, rosado on the right, but you get the idea. I found myself liking the color of the rosé more - it just looked more elegant in the glass. You'll also notice from the first picture in this post that the two rosés came in differently shaped bottles: the Spanish rosado came in a high-shouldered Bordeaux style bottle, while the French rosé came in a more gently-sloped Rhône style bottle.

As for the nose: the rosado smelled, well, kind of grapey. Actually, if you've ever taken a tour of a winery, it reminded me of the room where they store all of the aging oak barrels - damp, slightly sweet, and a thick grapey aroma. It also reminded me a bit of the smell of port. The rosé had a much lighter, sweeter nose, with hints of strawberries and citrus.

For the actual tasting, I admit - I went full-bore wine geek on this one. I used a wine thermometer. The absolute height of wine snobbery, I know, but I was inspired by Winedeb at Deb's Key West Wine & Garden blog. I always like how inviting her pictures of whites and rosés look - seeing as how she's in Key West, the bottles get a nice layer of condensation on them probably immediately after taking them outside. They also heat up pretty fast, so after she's done photographing them for her blog she sticks them back in the fridge to cool down again before tasting, and uses a wine thermometer every now and then to check and see if they've chilled enough to be enjoyable.

So, I was digging through my kitchen drawer of wine toys, and lo-and-behold: I actually own a wine thermometer! After reading Winedeb's posts, I had to try it out and see how/if the temperature affected the taste of the rosés. After my two bottles were done with their photo shoot, both were at 54° F. Judging from my wine books, this should be the perfect temperature to drink them at: most books seem to say that 50°-55° is right around where you want to serve rosés.

In the mouth, all of the light, sweet strawberry and citrus on the nose of the French rosé completely vanished. I was really just getting textures at this point rather than flavors - medium to full-bodied with some bitterness across the back of my tongue, and a slight creaminess to it. There was something annoying me about this wine though, and after letting it sit in my mouth awhile I decided it was the strong oakiness to it. I've never really been a fan of big oak, preferring "No Oak Chardonnays" fermented in stainless steel tanks to their often over-oaked brethren. So I wasn't too happy when some oak showed up in this rosé, but if you like oaky Chards then this wouldn't be a turn-off for you. The French rosé was otherwise pretty tasty. The Spanish rosado had a very different flavor. There was a tanginess to it, somewhat lemony. It has less body than the French, but more acidity.

By this point the wine had warmed up a bit - 57° F said my trusty thermometer. Both wines now seemed to have a bigger, sweeter nose. I thought I started smelling some vanilla in the rosé, while the rosado had an aroma like a dark red rose. A little bit of fruit flavor also crept in to the taste of the rosado, almost a sour cherry - still quite tangy.

Overall, both Kris and I liked both wines better when they were a bit warmer - warmer than you are apparently "supposed" to serve rosés. I liked to color of the French wine better, but enjoyed the uniqueness of the rosado, and definitely preferred the flavor of the Spanish wine over the French. We had some Parado cheese and crackers as an appetizer, and the rosado went perfectly with this tangy cheese. However, with our dinner of grilled salmon, the French wine paired much better.

Final recommendation - I enjoyed trying these wines side-by-side, but neither offered me what I'm looking for in a rosé. When I think rosé, I think picnic wine - something to sip on a warm summer day while out in the yard or playing croquet or something. Neither of these wines were "refreshing" enough to do that for me. I know, rosés are supposedly the "new thing" in wine, and I'm probably still a little gun-shy from White Zinfandel to have a completely open mind on rosés. I also just don't know enough about rosés to have some idea of what to expect when I pop the bottle. Because of this, I think I feel safer with whites for warm weather enjoyment and meals as I have a better understanding of what the wine is going to taste like.

However, both of these wines were still quite tasty in their own very different ways, and I think I'll keep trying out different rosés this summer. From my experience thus far, I think there are probably better rosé values out there than the wines in this tasting. Both of these wines were purchased for $9 at Total Wine in McLean. For one dollar less per bottle, a couple weeks ago I tasted a 2006 Anakena Cabernet Sauvignon Rosé from Rapel Valley, Chile that fit my "summer rosé" criteria perfectly. I recommend going out and giving that one a shot. Perhaps I'll pick up another next time I'm out, and pair the Anakena off against another Euro rosé, and see who comes out on top!