| All too often, we are quick to dismiss rosé as, well, just rosé. We are desperate for it when it is hot outside, but we treat it as a monothetic category, populated by one-dimensional, second-class citizens, afterthoughts. I wonder if there is not a bit of misogyny involved here, whether we subliminally pigeonhole rosé as a convention-minded person’s notion of a ladies’ wine, with the attendant associations of frilly lace, a heart-shaped box of Valentine’s Day chocolate, and the like. But the question is: are you man or woman enough to reject this ill-considered rubric? Over there are the wines of industrial Provençal producers making cookie-cutter, fruity wines with as much personality as a toaster pastry, and over here, the “useful,” sitting-on-your-ass-under-an-umbrella at the beach or pool sort of rosé; refreshing, sure, but undemanding. But rosé is actually a nuanced category once you leave the land of inside-the-lines coloring, and that’s what we’re up to this week—tasting nothing freakish, just freakishly delicious respites from the iron cage foisted upon us by the normies.
Anima Mundi Pét-nat Rosat Penedes 2024
We really dig what Agustí Torello Roca is up to, both at his family winery, under the AT Roca label, but even more so under his own label, Anima Mundi. Agustí’s reasonably priced fizzy wines, particularly his xarel-lo-dominant Camí dels Xops, are stunning, balanced on the knife-edge of stony minerality, yet also somehow quiet and subtle. The wine we’re tasting tonight is a pale, dry, light rosé, lightly fizzy, and made in part from xarel-lo, with the addition of maccabeau and garnatxa.
Olga Raffault Chinon Rosé 2025
Raffault is perhaps our favorite old-school cabernet franc grower. Meat-and-potatoes wines that we depend on to deliver just the sort of satisfaction we often crave from this grape—medium-bodied, not oaky, petrichor, yeah, but not so much that the other messages in the bottle are drowned out. Zero sugar, short maceration (plus some saignée juice).
Amorotti Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo 2023
A stunning, category-defying wine – is it a light, savory red, or a not-so-dark rosado, or simply cerasuolo? Yes. I hadn’t tasted this in a while, and was glad to revisit the wine at the importer’s trade tasting earlier this year, and wondered why the hell it wasn’t on our shelves.
Sierra de Toloño Rosado Rioja 2025
From the amazing Sandra Bravo, a balanced, medium-bodied rosado from a cooler-climate, high-elevation Rioja Alavesa. A blend of tempranillo and garnacha.
Special Projects “Thunder Egg” Eola Amity Hills 2925
An Oregonian ryšák from our old pal, Stetson Robbins. Ryšák is a Czech designation for cofermentations of red and white grapes. In Stetson’s hands, this vintage is mostly macerated pinot gris with a tiny bit of pinot noir, occupying, as ryšák does, the liminal space between orange wine, rosé, and light reds. Only 11.8 % ABV. |
