Pink is pretty but does not necessarily mean sweet

If you happened to be a baby boomer who discovered the joy of wine in the ’60s, you probably had a candleholder made from either a Mateus or Lancers bottle. (Their distinctive shapes showed all of our friends how cool we were.) Mateus rosé began in Portugal in 1942, followed by Lancers rosé in 1944; both were directed toward American tastes, which proved to be very successful. Both wines were light, fruity and slightly sweet, making them perfect for thirsty nonwine-experienced American palates. Although great rosés had been made for many years in Tavel in the Rhône Valley of southern France and from Anjou in the Loire Valley in central France, it was these two Portuguese imports that helped set the stage for American wine drinking during the ’60s wine boom. In the late 1990s, while visiting Napa and Sonoma, Calif., I noticed that many wineries were making a dry rosé, but most of these wines were sold only at the winery and not distributed nationwide. Living in St. Louis, I’ve always been amazed that the huge popularity of grilling did not push people into the rosé wine world, with most settling instead for a beer to go with their outdoor cooking. This is not meant to diminish the value of beer – great beer is superb for complementing food, but there is virtually no way to make a dry red wine taste good when served outdoors on a 100-degree day. The solution to the problem is rosé wine. It’s a well-known solution in southern France, the most popular region for pink wines, because it’s warmest along the Mediterranean, where the food is flavorful and occasionally very complex, and red wines just don’t taste good when they are cold. Chilling a red tends to emphasize the tannins and make it totally unbalanced. On the other hand, a warm red gives the wine a hot burning flavor from the alcohol. This is why reds are served at just below room temperature, about 60 degrees, which is actually cellar temperature. How does a wine become pink? There are three ways to get that beautiful color. “Wine 101” taught us that reds get their color from the dark skins soaking in the clear juice after the grapes are crushed. Then what? If skins are left in the juice for 12 to 24 hours (or longer) a level of pinkness is achieved, and at some point the winemaker removes the skins and, voilà, you have a pink wine. Another method is called saignée, which means “to bleed.” In this case, the skins are left for approximately the same length of time as in the first method, but some of the pink juice, usually 10 to 20 percent, is “bled” off. This is then processed separately from the remaining juice, which stays in contact with the skins for another week or two, adding more color and flavor to the subsequent red wine. In both cases, the pink juice is fermented on its own and can be made dry or sweet depending on the wishes of the winemaker. The third method is actually a blending of red wine and white wine, resulting in a pink wine blend. All three methods are ways of making pink, or rosé or vin gris (gray wine, meaning not black and not white). In Missouri, our history has pretty much mirrored the stereotype that pink equals sweet. As delicious as a Pink Catawba can taste, it is generally not a complement to fine cuisine because of the strong flavors of the labrusca family of grapes, and thus they were typically made into a sweeter style. This all changed a year ago, when Hermann’s Adam Puchta Winery released the first dry rosé (or at least the first in a very long time) in Missouri. Tim Puchta decided to call his 2004 dry pink wine simply Rosé. Not a particularly exciting name, but definitely descriptive. At its first contest, the 2005 Missouri Wine Competition, this wine won the first gold medal ever given to a dry rosé in our state judging. The wine certainly must have made an impression because at the 2006 competition there were at least three dry pinks. This definitely shows the direction some wineries are taking and the respect that they have for the future of the drier style. Two wineries from Augusta entered dry rosé wines this year: Augusta Winery, with its La Fleur Sauvage (85 percent Chambourcin, 10 percent Seyval, 5 percent Vignoles), and Montelle, with La Rosee (also 85 percent Chambourcin with 15 percent Vignoles). Both of these dry pinks were made using the saignée method. The highest award for rosé in the 2006 judging was a silver medal for the Adam Puchta 2005 Rosé. Tim Puchta adds a small amount of Norton (red) to a dry Vivant (white.) “I blend for flavor as well as color,” he told me. It is quite an accomplishment to win major medals for his first two dry rosés. The other 2006 medal winner was the sweeter Crown Valley Greenleaf Rosé 2005 from Ste. Genevieve, which was awarded a bronze medal. It is a blend of 94 percent Chardonel and 6 percent Norton with a residual sugar of 6 percent. At one of my wine group tastings last year, I brought two pink wines in brown paper bags (for anonymity, not for sidewalk use). One was the Niebaum-Coppola Pinot Noir Rosé 2004 from Napa Valley’s Carneros region. The other wine was the Adam Puchta 2004. After swirling, sniffing and sipping, the vote was 10-2 in favor of the Missouri entry. One of my favorite comments was, “This is like sipping on the Riviera.” Hermann is usually not compared to the south of France, but we appear to be getting closer.