Rosé Garden
The lovely and eminently capable ladies over at Vibrant Rioja set up a Rosado tasting last night in the outdoor garden of Ono at the base of the Hotel Gansevoort, renting a little self-contained cabana and inviting a group of young journalists–one guy and six very attractive women–to taste through a selection of 2006 Rioja Rosados while tapeando un poco among platters of sushi, duck spring rolls, crispy risotto balls with porcini and white truffle oil, chicken satay with peanut sauce, and coconut shrimp.
I’ve always been a sucker for rosé, not the insipid sweet stuff that’s made gazillions for Beringer since the 1980s, but the pink juice with character: Bandol, Champagne rosé, Franciacorta rosato, and Rioja rosado. The best rosés have exuberant aromas of red berry fruit–think cherry and strawberry–but are not the least bit sweet. A clean, almost citrusy finish is what you want to quench your thirst on a hot day, maybe just a touch of what wine nerds like to call “grip”, which is to say, textural astringency that grounds the wine and makes it friendly with food, the result of minimal skin contact the grape juice–known as must–has with its red skins.
And then there’s the simple joy of merely looking at the wine in your glass–that beautiful color reminiscent of the first warm day of the year, when, blessedly, the women of New York city put away their overcoats and bust out those flowing dresses made of soft and colorful fabric, making summer in the East Village much more tolerable.
The wines we tasted last night are as follows (with approximate retail price):
Light and easy drinking - the summer sippin’ wine:
- Marqués de Cáceres 2006 Rosado ($9.99) This has the cleanest style - simple and thirst quenching, the aperitif Rioja Rosado
Fruity, fragrant and full - wines for an outdoor summer seduction:
- Faustino V 2005 Rosado ($8.99) - Bursting with gobs of cherry fruit, the favorite rosado of wine writer and Rioja expert John Radford.
- CVNE 2006 Rosado ($12.99) - Great color, mucho cherry as well, one of the crowd’s favorites.
Lean and herbaceous - wines that call out for food:
- Muga 2006 Rosado ($10.99) - The only wine with a white grape–Viura–in the blend. Most complex of the bunch. With a faded salmon color the Spanish call ojo de gallo (eye of the rooster).
- El Coto 2006 Rosado ($9.99) - Firm and “gastronomic”, as a Spaniard would say, another crowd favorite.
Foods to eat with Rosado: Paella, grilled salmon, cherry tomato salad with goat cheese, grilled razor clams with garlic and lemon, Peking duck, shrimp cocktail, pulled pork sandwich, fried clams.
A note on vintages: The 2006 bottlings for all of these wines will soon be on the market, if they are not already. Rioja Rosado–with the notable exception of the complex and delicious Lopez de Heredia Vina Tondonia Rosado, whose latest release is a 1995–is meant to be drunk young, so look for the ’06’s. The Faustino 2006 was not available for this tasting, and the ‘05 showed some signs of fading.