Rediscovering rose

Rose is that wine that was fun to drink once upon a time, because it was a grown-up drink, but was pink… and probably fruity and sweet. Kind of like Kool-Aid with alcohol. At least that is what every single review of rose I’ve ever read says. Personally, the closest I ever came to rose was the white Zinfandel my American friend used to bring whenever she visited Montreal.
But then we “got into” wine, and for summertime drinking, my choices were rose or white. Before I discovered Chardonnay (which, critics be damned, is best when it’s oaky), the only whites I knew were the insipid house whites served at bars in the Eastern Townships, like the one on which I got unbelievably drunk one night, and after which the idea of white wine made me a little green around the gills.
So rose it was.
Our perennial favourite is Candidato, which is very drinkable but also very reasonably priced. It’s a Tempranillo, and while it’s fruity, it’s not oversweet, and goes down well with a BBQ.
This evening, I made a Thai vegetable curry from the Moosewood Low Fat cookbook (using coriander and Vietnamese coriander from the garden, no less) with naan from President’s Choice (which I recommend for those weekday meals when the idea of making naan from scratch isn’t so appealing). We decided we wanted to go pink with this meal, and opened a bottle of Inycon Estate Shiraz rose, which we bought this week based on the Gazette review. Because this one is a Shiraz base, I was expecting it to be a little heartier than the Candidato, but it’s not particularly thick. It is very, very nice, and we will buy it again – for the same basic reasons we’re Candidato buyers. The Inycon Estate is maybe a little less sweet than the Tempranillo, but it’s still definitely a rose, not just a pale red. It’s got a few berries in it, a hint of lime, and Dr. T claims there’s a trace of bubblegum (!). It’s got a nice finish, and I didn’t taste the gum 😉
We have a couple of other pinks to try, but we’re also heading out to the UK before the end of the week – I’ll try to post a few reviews, particularly if the bottle is available in Quebec or other parts of Canada.

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