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So enamored have I been with the Vinho Verde we’ve been drinking this summer that when we hit the wine section of the Healthy Living Market in Burlington, VT, at the start of our camping trip, I picked up a bottle of rosé Vinho Verde more or less on instinct. Yes, it was a rosé: while many of us, in the States at least, automatically associate Vinho Verde with white wines such as the one I reviewed below, fully half the production in this largest of Portugese wine regions is from red grapes – though little of it, apparently, leaves the north of Portugal. What percentage of Vinho Verde is rosé I can’t tell you. What I can say is that, based on this example, there should be that much more of it.

First, the caveat. Like the Mapreco reviewed below, the Aveleda Casal Garcia Vinho Verde Rosé, Portugal (NV) is not exactly complicated. Any wine that advertises itself on its front label, as if part of its vintage or regional information, as “crisp and refreshing,” is hardly looking to be put aside in someone’s cellar, or expecting to be served on the best restaurant wine lists. But it is an unusual wine. The color is a deep pink bordering on red, almost as deep as a heavyweight Tavel from the Rhône, despite containing barely 10% alcohol. The spritz (typically achieved in Vinho Verde by suppressing the malolactic fermentation and injecting carbon dioxide prior to bottling) is so pronounced that you can see the bubbles in the glass and immediately taste them on the palate. In fact, you could almost be fooled into thinking that this is a sparkling wine but for the fact that it doesn’t have any of the subtleties or complexities of decent sparklers.

No, to be honest, this looks like, smells like, and tastes like alcoholic cherryade, a “crisp and refreshing” (indeed) combination of fizz, fruit, flowers and residual sweetness that gives maximum summertime satisfaction with a relative minimum of potency. Packaged in an alcopop bottle, it would surely be a hit with underage drinkers across Britain and America. Is that a back-handed compliment? Perhaps. But I’m not alone in loving this drink and yet wondering if it actually qualifies as wine: read the opening statement on the 750ml blog, for example. Still, proof is in the purchasing: we returned to Healthy Living before our drive home to pick up another three $9 bottles. Suffice to say that in the ensuing heatwave, they’ve all disappeared already.

Turns out that my “discovery” of the rosé Vinho Verde is somewhat belated: on second visit, I noticed that the wine carried a shelf talker showing its 88pt rating from Wine Spectator. Though I don’t buy my wines based on magazine reviews, in this case I’m glad to see that the Wine Spectator celebrated the Casal Garcia for what it is: astonishingly enjoyable, markedly unusual, blatantly inexpensive wine that is perfectly in tune with late summer vibes.

PS: Casal Garcia also makes one of the more popular white Vinho Verdes – so if your local dealer sells that, ask him or her to sell the rosé as well.

PPS: Like it says on the label, serve chilled. Real chilled, like you would a white. And beware that you can drink this stuff just like it tastes, like cherryade – meaning that the low alcohol is easily canceled out by high intake. All of which makes it ideal for those late summer days when you have nowhere to go but from the lounge chair to the grill and back again.

This time last year, I was bitching about the poor quality of a cheap Vinho Verde that seemed to be making regular appearances around our summer circuit. Not any more. At Boiceville Wines and Spirits, opposite Onteora Middle/High School, you can still get what I described last year as the “under-ripe, over-sweet and little bit sickly” Gazela for $7, but for just a dollar more, you can get the Cavipor “Mapreco” Vinho Verde, Portugal, 2009. The difference, at least to my palate, is astonishing. The wine is still inexpensive, still light in color, and still low in alcohol – useful for those hot summer weekend afternoons when you fancy a refresher but still plan on doing something important later in the day. It has that “petillance” that comes from the carbon dioxide injection and it’s suitably sharp and tangy.

But it also has several all-important ingredients for good wine. It has FLAVOR, in particular that of lemon and lime, though with some green apples lingering around too.  It has TEXTURE, laden with ample acidity though avoiding the pure fizz of the Gazela. And it has BALANCE, meaning that it feels like a proper wine from its initial aromas through to the final short finish. It’s the kind of bottle that I can pick up night after night, knowing that it’s cheap enough in price that we don’t have to save it or necessarily even finish it, but that it’s good enough that we’ll constantly savor it. In tight financial times, where good wine under $10 is increasingly hard to find, the $8 Mapreco has been my light white wine of the summer.

…And with that, I’m taking the family camping in Vermont for a week. Enjoy the backlog of concert and wine reviews, and “see you” on our return.

Some of us have been banging on about this for years: Riesling is the King – or, if you prefer, the Queen – of white wines. And yet it’s madly maligned, like it’s some Marie Antoinette of noble grapes. Why? Perhaps because too many people grew up on too much cheap German crap, and they still think Riesling was the grape responsible for all that awful, cloying Liebfraumilch and Blue Nun (even though it was mainly the Müller-Thurgau grape at fault). Yet Riesling is arguably the most versatile of all white grapes; with the possible exception of Chenin Blanc, it’s the only one capable of producing world class wines from driest to the sweetest of forms, with stops at all alluring points in-between.

You know this, of course, because you’ve been reading iJamming! for ten full years now, right (RIGHT?), and you’ll have read my countless posts about the fine Rieslings from New York’s own Finger Lakes (as per this beauty on the left), reviews of the great German and Austrian Rieslings when I’ve been lucky enough to attend industry events, and my occasional observations on how, every time I show up for a BYOB night with my serious wine geek semi-friends, they immediately gravitate to those German and Austrian Rieslings with the intensity of hip-hop DJs at a fire sale of 1960s and 70s break-beat albums.

Now, it seems, finally, the rest of the world is catching up. Or, if not the rest of the world, then perhaps just New York City. Because while I was down and out (at night) in Manhattan and Brooklyn at the end of July, it seemed that Riesling was, well, on everybody’s lips. City Winery was pouring its own production from the Finger Lakes by the glass when I went there for the Channeling Chilton Show. (Admittedly, it was a mildly disappointing glass, characteristic Granny Smith apple and crisp pear flavors, and a pleasant tangerine/nectarine element around the back of the palate, then overtaken by a lingering minerality and stoniness that seemed more a fault than a reflection of terroir.) And I was especially impressed that when I headed down to the Hotel Jane for the Spiritualized show after party, the bar had added Riesling to the usual choices of Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio. Though I didn’t check out the specifics of the Riesling on hand, I did buy a glass (alright, two of them); it had the lively acidity that makes this grape so refreshing, the grassy citrus notes that sometimes can confuse it with a Sauvignon Blanc, the apple and pear that then distinguish it as Riesling and, in this particular case as with many others, a slight hint of Residual Sugar.

It was also, plainly, low in alcohol, and that’s surely a major reason that Riesling seems to have caught on in New York this summer. When it’s almost a hundred degrees out, and the humidity is just as high, meaning the real-feel temperature is somewhere round that of an oven, in the Sahara, at mid-day, the last thing you should be doing is be knocking back bottles of high-octane Zinfandel or heavily oaked Californian Chardonnay – or, despite it being the best wine in the world, a Châteauneuf du Pape topping out at close to 16% alcohol. Riesling, which in entry-level German form usually hovers around just 10% alcohol, delivers all the fruit you expect in a good wine, the acidic vibrancy too, but crucially, it offers restraint. As Jancis Robinson has long been fond of saying, you can drink it without getting drunk. Well, at least for a while.

That appears to be the message at Terroir, a new (to me) wine bar with locations in both the East Village and Tribeca, currently offering some 25 Rieslings by the glass (see list above) – and, at least as far as white wine is concerned, ONLY Riesling by the glass. It’s an act of bold-faced bravery, mixed with a dash of insanity and an admitted smidgeon of snobbery. Riesling is so damn good, Terroir appears to be insisting, and it comes in such a variety of styles, and such a wide price range, and hey, we’re offering both 3oz tastings and 6oz glasses that, trust us, you won’t want to drink anything else.

Judging by my experience at the East Village location, on 12th Street between 1st and A (see below), the risk appears to be paying off. The bar was packed. Admittedly, that meant only 20 or so people, but all of them drinking white wine had to be, by default, drinking Riesling. And as far as I could tell, none seemed to be complaining. Not about the wine perhaps, though we were all bitching about the air conditioning, which was struggling mightily to cope with the night’s heat, humidity, and the fluctuations in both caused by the constant opening and closing of the front door. That aside, I liked the place. I liked our waitress, friendly and patient even though she clearly didn’t have the knowledge as the one at City Winery the night before. I liked that the bottles of wine were brought to our table to be poured (rather than at the bar), and that they were measured by eyesight, which appeared to be leaning on the generous side. And if I didn’t love the prices, I didn’t have a big problem with them, all things considered: a $6-$7 average for a 3oz pour of an interesting Riesling seemed acceptable – even, or perhaps these days, especially in the East Village.

And I liked the wines themselves. My friend Joe Moryl and I were both extremely taken by the sparkling Jagdschloss Brut 20008 from the Rheingau, which had a delicacy and vivacity you don’t normally find in a champagne at this price ($5.25 for a 3oz taste, almost double for the 6oz). And I was not disappointed by the extravagantly fruity Feinherb Kabinett Knebel 2008 from Winninger Hamm in the Mosel ($6.75), at least not until I tasted the Feinherb 2008 from Von Basserman-Jordan of the Pfalz which was more floral, leaner, more delicate and pure – and cheaper, too, at $5.50. My pal Joe then had a glass of the Federspiel Urgestein Terrasen from FX Pichier in Austria’s Wachau region, which he seemed content with – as he should be, at $8.75. Me, I returned immediately to the Von Basserman-Jordan, whose web site confirms the winery’s history and esteem. (I realize that these brief reviews exemplify German and Austrian Riesling’s key marketing problem – the complicated labeling. Even I did not know, until Joe told me, that Feinherb, for example, is an unofficial byword for semi-dry – a wine with somewhere between 10 and 20 grams of sugar per liter. No wonder that Hotel Jane simply said “Riesling” and left it at that.)

But if I liked the wines, I absolutely loved the 53-page wine list. I’m only parting talking about content here, though rest assured that if you want to drink by the bottle at Terroir this summer, you can enjoy almost every other white grape under the sun, that the choice of reds by the glass numbers 25 or more different grapes, that there are dozens of beers to choose from too, ciders a-plenty, and several elite bottles of wine that stretch into the 4-figure range. No, I’m talking about the fact that this is a wine list list with attitude – from the graffitied front cover (see above) through to the page-long essays of “My Favorite Riesling” by those who apparently know of what they talk, and, especially, the various full page diatribes against people, places and unworthy institutions. There’s a rant about New York City street fairs (“last year we had to put up with 321 street fairs that contributed a big fat zero to New York City life”) and a number of hilarious (if cruel) full page character assassinations. A sample from why Lindsay Lohan needs a glass of Riesling: “Because it will provide you with the absolute clarity necessary to convince you that a life stupidly lived is not a life lived at all.” A sample from why Mel Gibson needs a glass of Riesling: “Because you need to respect women, gays, Latinos, Jews, African Americans – in fact, you need to respect everybody, you Jackass.” I don’t fully agree with the character assassination of President Obama, who I believe is stymied by the forces around him, not by his own lack of conviction, but I do share the concluding sentiment: “Wake up and savor the Riesling! It is a new generation that demands change. And we need it now!”

Will this generation change to Riesling? Well, if they keep pouring those buckets of cheap Pinot Grigio crap in bars from Brooklyn to Bearsville, Williamsburg to Woodstock – and, while we’re at it, and speaking from experience, from London to Manchester – this generation will certainly change to something. And it will as likely change to Riesling as Viognier (too exotic), Grüner Veltliner (too monolithic), Vermentino (too easily confused with Verdicchio and Vernaccia, Verdejo and Verdelho), or Chenin Blanc (though I predict that noble grape’s day will come soon after). As ever, New York may have got a lead on the fashion stakes.

Finding a good rosé for summer drinking is not as easy as it sounds. The Provençal favorites typically push $15 and more these days, and to be honest, and much though I love the region, I sometimes find them overwhelming, especially without food; red grapes like Grenache and Mourvédre can pack a fair old punch after coming to ripeness in the long hot southern French summers. Of course, you can make rosé from any red grape, more or less anywhere in the world, which is why most wine stores offer a frequently dizzying array that include Garnacha from Spain, Cabernet Franc from the Loire (or Long Island), Merlot from Bordeaux and surrounding territories, Pinot Noir from California and Malbec from Argentina, to name but a few.

Indeed, why stop there? When I was last down in New York City we stopped in at the exclusively Italian Bar Veloce, which offered a $9 glass of “Rosato,” by the Lechtaler family of Trentino, comprised exclusively from the Lagrein grape. This is a grape, native to the Trentino-Alto Adige regions in the far north of Italy, that I’ve enjoyed in its red format on the couple of occasions I’ve experienced it – but as a rosé/rosato it appeared to truly excel, proving succulent and settled, noticeably dark in color, full of flavor and yet not demanding of food accompaniment. The next day, at Heights Chateau on Atlantic Street in Brooklyn, I saw a Lagrein Rosé for just $12 – an astonishingly good price considering that the producer, Alois Lageder from Alto Adige is consistently one of northern Italy’s finest. (Their Pinot Grigio puts most Italian jug wine of that name to shame. Their Müller-Thurgau will give you renewed faith in this often innocuous grape. And their own vineyards are all biodynamically farmed.)

Opened back in the Catskills, this Alois Lageder Sudtirol-Alto Adige Lagrein Rosé 2008 proved an absolute delight. More of a bright red than the typical salmon pink of a rosé,  there was some pronounced dark cherry on the palate, some raspberry and strawberry too, and then there was plenty by way of dried herbs and floral texture too. But what I found most important was the grip and muscle, that all important sense of body, in what was still, ultimately, a refreshing and light summer wine. It went absolutely perfectly with some grilled green vegetables at sunset. I imagine it would go pretty well with most things. I’m tempted to say that at $12 a bottle, about the one thing it won’t do is burn a hole in your pocket – but a quick online search reveals that Heights Chateau is (was?) selling it several bucks cheaper than anyone else I can find on the east coast. Oh well. So is it an equally good wine at $15-$17? Yes, it is. Treat yourself while you still have the weather to do so.

DOMAINE DE LA PÉPIÈRE “LA PÉPIE” Cabernet Franc, VINS DE PAYS DU VAL DE LOIRE, 2009, $13.50

Marc Ollivier, he of the renowned Muscadets, steps into the rather overdone world of “animal” labels with his Vins de Pays “La Pépie.” (There’s a cartoon chicken, looking very drunk, on the front.) Still, unlike many of the conglomerates with their penguins and yellow tails and what have you, he’s a proven artisan, so we’ll cut him a considerable break. A darker color than I might have expected from a country Loire red, the nose is almost bubblegummy, to the point that I might initially have mistaken it for a Beaujolais. Light on the palate, with more of that cherry/ bubblegum flavor, there’s an impressive initial grip, and only the faintest hint of the bell peppers or pencil shavings or tobacco notes I’d expect from elsewhere in the Loire. But there’s depth to this that becomes apparent as the wine opens up, and it’s a cheerful little beast, too – so while not truly typical of Cabernet Franc, least not as I know it, there’s no question but that it’s an enjoyable, easy and rewarding summer wine. While the $13.50 price tag at Chamber Street Wines is perfectly reasonable given the quality, I hesitate to think how little it must cost at the cellar door.

CHATEAU RIVES-BLANQUES “DÉDICACE” Chenin Blanc, LIMOUX, 2008 $17

I picked this up at Heights Chateau in Brooklyn at a Saturday afternoon tasting, totally intrigued by the prospect of a 100% Chenin Blanc from, of all places, the Languedoc. (Specifically, from the Limoux AOC, best known for its sparkling whites made predominantly from Marzac and Chardonnay.) Make no mistake, this is an entirely different animal than the dry, steely, age-worthy Chenins of the Loire (which reach their apotheosis in Vouvray and Savennieres). A solid yellow in the glass, this Chateau Rives-Blanques “Dédicace” 2008 emitted a tropical nose with plenty of mango, orange and peach floating around. Not a lot of acidity but a good full solid body. On the palate, a certain creamy buttery texture comes into play, suggesting the presence of oak fermentation and/or ageing. And guess what? Upon looking up the winery’s web site, I see that “AOC Limoux is the only white wine appellation in France requiring fermentation and maturation in oak barrels.” You learn something every day. Fair enough then, this is probably a fair representation of a still Chenin Blanc from Limoux – in fact, I gather that from a long time is was the only still Chenin Blanc from Limoux – but while it served its purpose once we got some food around it, I can’t say we fell in love with it the way Jancis Robinson (and others) have clearly done so. My problem is probably one of changing palates, in as much as I used to be easily impressed by this kind of bold, effusive wine. But these days, I’m looking for typicity. So if I want tropical fruit, I’ll take a good VDP Viognier from the south of France at the same price; if I want butter and oak, California has some perfectly good Chardonnays for only a couple of dollars more. And if I want a great Chenin Blanc, there are plenty places to find it in France… albeit in a markedly different style.