Tag Archives: rose wine

Wine of the week: Angels & Cowboys Rose 2015

angels & cowboys roseMaybe the Angels & Cowboys rose isn’t the greatest rose in the history of the world, and maybe the Wine Curmudgeon’s enthusiasm for it is a bit overblown.

And then again, maybe not.

The Angels & Cowboys rose ($15, sample, 12.8%) won a platinum medal at this year’s Critics Challenge. I tasted it blind with San Francisco wine critic Leslie Sbrocco, who almost went more gaga than I did. We looked at each after we tasted it, shook our heads in disbelief, and started with the superlatives. Later, I tasted it with a friend who loves rose as much as I do, and he said it was so good he could give up red and white wine and drink only rose from then on.

So expect to taste complexity that is not only rare in a rose, but rare in most wines at this price. Look for wonderful crispness, a Provencal-like minerality, and tart fruit (cranberry?), and then some soft fruit (cherry?) in the back. The wine almost smells like a flowery spring day, and if that’s corny and not something that I usually write, then so be it.

Highly recommended, either on its own or with almost anything you can think of to eat with it, including a massive piece of red meat from the grill. This is the kind of wine that liberates my soul from the grocery store junk that I have to drink too much of to do my job, and is the perfect rose to lead into this week’s ninth annul Memorial Day and rose wine extravaganza.

Winebits 439: Rose wine edition

rose wineBecause, as we prepare for this week’s ninth annual Memorial Day and rose wine post, the rose boom means  news and recommendations are coming from the least likely places.

• To your health? If rose is booming, then it’s just a matter of time until someone touts its health benefits. Because we wouldn’t drink it otherwise, would we? This piece is silly enough to lift the blog’s wine and health news ban, and it includes a Left Coast dietitian with a book called “The MIND Diet” advocating roses. We should also drink rose, says the story, because they’re lower in calories than red wine, since they have less alcohol.

• Only expensive rose counts: Or so says this piece, crediting the rose boom to the Angelina Jolie-Brad Pitt rose, another rose that costs $100, and Andy Warhol’s Campbell soup can. And because it’s from New York, the infamous Hamptons’ rose shortage is mentioned. I wonder: Do people really believe this stuff? Isn’t it enough that rose became popular because it’s cheap and tasty?

• Making recommendations: The About.com sites – think of them as Wikipedia written by one person – do an OK job with wine, and this season’s rose picks aren’t bad – Charles & Charles, long a favorite here, and the South African Mulderbosch. My only objection? The piece includes more rose closer to $20 than to $10, including a $16 Chilean rose. To which I have just one one thing to say: Muga.

studio microphone

Winecast 27: Yoav Gilat, Angels & Cowboys

yoav gilat
Yoav Gilat

The Wine Curmudgeon is among the least likely of fanboys; one of the first pieces of advice I got in the newspaper business was “Don’t god up the ballplayers,” a reminder that someone who did one thing very well wasn’t necessarily any better than anyone else.

So how to explain my almost teenage enthusiasm for the Angels & Cowboys rose, which is the focus of this podcast with winery co-owner Yoav Gilat? Maybe it’s Gilat’s enthusiasm for well-made and fairly-priced rose – he told me he doesn’t understand winery business models that revolve around making wine that’s too expensive for anyone to buy.

Gilat, a reformed lawyer who turned to wine as part of his rehabilitation, is an ardent proponent for rose and how it should be made – not a pink version of white wine or something heavy to appeal to red wine drinkers, but a rose. And that means an affordable wine with its fruit, acidity, and minerality in balance, and something the Angels & Cowboys rose does in award-winning fashion.

What better way to get ready for next week’s annual rose preview than with this podcast? Click here to download or stream the podcast, which is about 16 1/2 minutes long and takes up 8 ½ megabytes. The sound quality is good.

Winebits 425: Pierre de Wet, grape shortage, fake rose

pierre de wet ? Texas wine pioneer: Pierre de Wet, who died last month at the age of 61, was one of the bravest Texas winery owners I knew. He planted vinifera — chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, and so forth — in the heat and humidity of East Texas, even though Pierce’s Disease kills vinifera just as surely as I drink coffee in the morning. This never deterred the South African native, and he used to enjoy taking visitors around his Kiepersol Estate vineyards in a golf cart to show them where Pierce’s had destroyed the vines and where it hadn’t. And, somehow, Pierre’s daughter, Marnelle Durrett, used those grapes to fashion quality wine, including a very nice syrah. The other thing about Pierre that I admired? He understood the scourge of tasting room palate, a regional wine affliction that blinds winemakers to the flaws of what they make, and worked hard to overcome it. He was constantly asking others for their honest assessment of his wines, a quality all too rare in regional wine.

? Lots and lots of grapes: Most of the reporting detailing the 2015 California grape harvest said it was five percent less than the 2014 harvest, which got the panic mongers started. One even went so far as to say there would be a grape shortage thanks to the smaller harvest and wildfires that gave the grapes smoke taint. Fortunately, the Wine Curmudgeon is here to point that the smaller harvest was still the sixth biggest ever, and that grape prices have actually declined — which wouldn’t happen if there had been a shortage. So if wine prices increase this year and next, it won’t be because there aren’t enough grapes. It will be because producers are trying to make up for the last decade, when they didn’t raise prices.

? Pink fraud: It was bound to happen, given the increasing popularity of rose. One French producer has been fined some $11,000 for making rose by mixing red and white wine, which is not only illegal in France but results in crappy wine. Rose is typically made with red grapes, and the grape skins give the wine its pink color depending on how long they’re left in the grape juice. Ironically, reports the France 24 news site, there was a 2009 proposal to allow rose to be made by mixing red and white wine, but it was rejected after protests by French winemakers.

Mini-reviews 72: Estancia, Toad Hollow, Les Dauphins, Belleruche

wine reviewsReviews of wines that don ?t need their own post, but are worth noting for one reason or another. Look for it on the final Friday of each month.

? Estancia Chardonnay Unoaked 2014 ($10, purchased, 13%): Not very chardonnay-like, with an odd, though pleasant, orange muscat aroma and a hint of sweetness. Chardonnay for people who want it to taste like moscato.

? Toad Hollow Risqu ($16, sample, 6%): One of my favorite bubblies, mostly because it’s made using an obscure grape and equally obscure sparkling process. This is the best it has been in years, and one of best sweet sparklers I’ve tasted in a long while. Tight, wonderful bubbles, sweet lemon, and acidity to balance all.

? Cellier des Dauphins Les Dauphins Reserve Rouge 2013 ($13, sample, 13%): Grocery store plonk masquerading as award-winning French wine, with lots of flabby sweet red fruit, harsh tannins, and almost nothing else. This is a marketing wine, where what the label looks like is more important than what’s in the bottle.

? Chapoutier Belleruche Rose 2014 ($12, sample, $13): Everyone else likes this wine more than I do, and it always shows up on summer rose lists. But it always seems pricey for what it is — sweet, crisp strawberry fruit and not much else.

Memorial Day and rose 2012

Memorial Day and rose 2015

rose 2015The blog’s eighth annual rose post, which runs every year at the traditional start of summer, is notable for two reasons. First, it may well be the only place on the Internet that has consistently advocated for rose in the last decade, and, second, because of all the wines we’ve talked about. Dare I say that the combined posts are among the most comprehensive list of cheap, well-made, and value-oriented roses in the cyber-ether?

The Wine Curmudgeon, being the humble sort of fellow that he is, will let you decide that. The links at the bottom of this post will take you to many of the past recommendations, while the blog’s rose category offers even more reviews from the past eight years. The blog’s rose primer discusses styles, why rose is dry, and how it gets its pink color, and which vintages to buy. Note that some producers, who still don’t understand that we want dry rose instead of sweet pink wine, are calling their sweet pink wine rose to confuse us. The giveaway? Terms like silky and smooth on the back label. Rose should be crisp.

This year’s suggestions are below, but they’re only a start. As I wrote last year, “It’s almost impossible to find a badly made $10 rose.”

? Fattoria La Valentina Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo 2013 ($11, purchased, 12.5%): Solid, if fruity, Italian rose with lots of strawberry, no doubt from the montepulciano d ?abruzzo grape used to make the wine. Think of it as the pink wine equivalent of the red wine made in the same region from the same grape, which usually offers quality and value.

? Goats do Roam Rose 2014 ($8, purchased, 13.5%): Another in a long series of solid, fruity, value-driven rose from this South African producer. It has gamay this year, the same grape used in Beaujolais in France, which gives the wine more fruit (strawberry?) than you would expect.

? Yalumba Y Series Rose 2013 ($10, purchased, 12%): Australia’s Yalumba always does a fine job with rose, and this no exception. It’s made with sangiovese, and offers soft red fruit balanced by cranberry and an apple peel sort of finish. Always one of my favorites.

? Los Vascos Rose 2014 ($10, sample, 13.5%): This Chilean rose, owned by France’s Rothschild family, has had its ups and downs. But this vintage, made with cabernet sauvignon, is structured, fresh, and features dark red fruit. There is even some tannin, which adds interesting balance.

More about Memorial Day and rose:
? Memorial Day and rose 2014
 ? Memorial Day and rose 2013
? Memorial Day and rose 2012
? My lunch with Provence
? $100 of wine

Mini-reviews 67: Black Friday wine edition

Black Friday wineBecause what’s better than four cheap wine reviews — none more than $10 — for Black Friday? Plus, you don’t have to get up at 3 a.m. or wait in line to read it.

? La Fiera Montepulciano d’Abruzzo 2012 ($9, purchased, 13%): This vintage of the Hall of Fame Italian red isn’t as interesting as previous versions — not as deliciously tart and missing the earthiness that made me want to buy a case. Still, it’s worth drinking, with mostly cherry fruit.

? Melini Orvietto 2013 ($7, purchased, 12.5%): Soft white fruit and bone dry, this Italian white is a wonderful food wine. The problem is that the various parts are disjointed, so you get one swallow of fruit and one swallow of acid instead of it being all of one. But still a terrific value.

? El Sancho Escudero White NV ($5, purchased, 11%): This Spanish white is a knockoff of the much loved Rene Barbier white, made with the same cava grapes. It’s not as lemony or fresh as the Barbier, but delivers $5 worth of value. May be Whole Foods private label.

? Rare Rose NV ($10, sample, 13%): Surprisingly tasty given that it seemed, from all appearances, to be just another California sweet pink wine. But it’s just barely sweet, and the red fruit (strawberry?) balances the sweetness. This is wine for someone who wants to try something other than white zinfandel.