Stop and Smell the Roses

The 14th Napa Valley Wine Auction in June, for the 14th consecutive time, drew hundreds of wealthy wine collectors and served them all the wrong wines.

That’s because the temperature was nearly 90 and essentially the only wines offered were Chardonnay (high alcohol, wood-laden) and Cabernet Sauvignon (astringent and served too warm to be pleasant).

What the organizers of this event, and all similar events, completely miss is that there really is a perfect wine for this kind of setting . . . but perhaps not for this kind of people. It is rose; although those who attend chic events such as wine auctions are too focused on ornamental wine to appreciate rose.

What was clear was that neither Chardonnay nor Cabernet was refreshing in weather this hot.

Joy Sterling, daughter of Iron Horse Vineyards owners Barry and Audrey Sterling and wife of Iron Horse winemaker Forest Tancer, reports that her family served Rosato di Sangiovese and Brut Rose on Mother’s Day. “They are the perfect wines for hot weather, especially when you’re dining outside,” she says, noting that the exotic cranberry-scented Sangiovese grape makes an excellent rose when the juice is drawn off the grapeskins just a couple of hours after crushing.

However, the recent boom in making great dry and off-dry rose was at least partially born of expedience. About a decade ago many winemakers decided to concentrate the color and flavor in their red wines, draining off a few gallons of just-starting-to-ferment grape juice, leaving the drained portion to ferment without the skins.

The result was infinitely better than the flat, sweet, insipid rose wines of the 1970s, which left such a bad taste in the mouths of wine lovers that rose all but disappeared as a category.

This coincided with an increase in interest in dry pink wines fashioned after those of the Rhone Valley in France and other southern French districts. Many winemakers began to make pink wines for their own amusement, and friends who’d come by the winery would taste these wines, drink them up, and suggest that the winemaker do it regularly.

So the winemaker would tell the owner of the winery. And invariably, the owner would say: “Rose? Are you nuts? Sure, it tastes great, but who’s gonna buy it?” And there the experiment would end.

But the attraction of dry rose for certain occasions was so obvious that experimentation continued, often under wraps. Soon a few wineries gambled and made dry rose in sufficient supply to sell out of tasting rooms, and then the word started getting out.

This time, the push was for drier wines.

“We made 20 vintages of our Rose of Cabernet Sauvignon,” says Patrick Will, general manager at Firestone Vineyard in the Santa Ynez Valley. “But it was sweeter than we liked, and last year we decided to drop it.”

In its place is a pink wine, made from one-third Cabernet Sauvignon grapes and two-thirds Cabernet Franc, a small quantity of which was tested at the Firestone tasting room in 1993. “It just flew out the door,” says Will, “so we decided to switch completely to a barrel-fermented vin gris -style wine.”

The name of this newcomer to the rose category is Gemstone, and at $9 it’s a lovely alternative to a French Tavel. In the future, Will says, winemaker Alison Greene may blend in Syrah for more complexity.

Even the large Robert Mondavi Winery in the Napa Valley plans to make a rose this year, to add to its newly announced La Famiglia di Robert Mondavi line of Italian varietal wines. This, even though roses are rare in Italy.

The line, kicked off with four special wines released a few weeks ago, will be broadened in a year with a dry-styled Refosco Rose, made from a light red grape that grows mainly in northern Italy. Until then, visitors to the Mondavi tasting room in Oakville can buy a Bocce Pinot Noir Rose, a wine made mainly for employees, though some 500 cases are at the tasting room at $8 a bottle.

All this interest in rose comes at the same time that Americans are demanding lighter red wines. Merlot sales are off the charts for the past three years; Gamay Beaujolais sales have risen rapidly in that same period to some 750,000 cases, and red Zinfandel recently topped 1.1 million cases.

To tap into that expanding market for light red wines, Sutter Home, the winery that gave us White Zinfandel, has created a sort of hybrid wine, Soleo, with and attractive silk-screened package and a not-this, not-that taste.

The wine is darker than some roses, but it’s not dry because it’s got 1.5% residual sugar. However, the acid and tannin are more like red wine, so it isn’t very sweet. Served chilled, it’s really a dark rose.

Sutter Home is making a quarter of a million cases of it, and it’s selling well. It is the tops in a fast-expanding category that many merchants didn’t even acknowledge existed until recently. Today, however, every fine wine shop is scrambling to have at least a couple of roses on their shelves.

Rumpus, an upscale cafe in San Francisco, has discovered the trend and has beaten most others to the punch, offering 20 roses by the glass or bottle.

“Anyone would be crazy to drink Chardonnay when it’s hot,” says Rumpus owner Jim Kopp.

At least 30 wineries in California make rose, including the following 1994 wines (with case production in parentheses):

* Joseph Phelps Vineyards “Le Mistral” $11 (4,000 cases): This is the best commercial rose made in the United States, and maybe the world. It is very dark in color (almost red), but with an exotic cherry and rose petal aroma. The taste is intense with black pepper and clove, a hint of strawberry and an almost smoked quality in the aftertaste. As much a light red in taste as any rose I have tasted, but with a texture that is pure silk.

* Preston Vineyards “Le Petit Faux” $10 (370 cases): A cherry soda aroma with earthy notes, soft and well-rounded flavors and a delicate spice note.

* V. Sattui Winery Gamay Rouge $11 (7,500 cases): Not a dry wine, this off-dry version of rose has amazing maraschino cherry fruit and tastes soft and juicy. A great picnic wine, available only at the Napa Valley winery or by calling (707) 963-7774.

* Etude Wines Pinot Noir Rose $11 (350 cases): Pure elegance. It smells like what a great sparkling blanc de noirs ought to smell like, with racy Pinot Noir fruit, but there’s a hint of oak from aging in barrels, and a totally dry feel offset by a creamy texture.

* Bonny Doon Vineyards “Vin Gris de Cigare” $8 (8,000 cases): Classic rose aroma of cherry, leaves and a hint of melon. Dry, light, fresh taste.