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the iJammming! featured wine region:
Southern Rhône Rosés
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1) THE MYTH
Let's face it: Rosé wines have a bum rap. It's hardly surprising if you've ever tried the horrendous "blush" wines that too many Americans drink as if just a faintly alcoholic soda - usually low alcohol, semi-sweet, so-called "white" zinfandels mass produced by the likes of Sutter Home, Gallo and Beringer. In Europe, rosé wines have a reputation barely much better, (no) thanks to the insipid summer sippers imported en masse from Spain, Portugal and France.
But visit Provence in summer and rosé wines are just about all that you see people drinking, tourists and natives alike. There has to be a reason for this, and there is: tasted in their home environment on a hot summer afternoon, with some olives or aioli as an appetizer, or alongside a ratatouille, grilled vegetables or any of the other summer meals featuring the distinct herbs de Provence flavors, then young, chilled rosé wines come into their own.
Of course, many is the Mediterranean visitor who has brought rosé wines home from their holiday, or picked up what they trust to be reputable examples from local stores back in the big city, only to be crushingly disappointed when they realize that what tasted so good in the summer sun alongside local food seems vapid and flavorless under a cloudy sky and soaking up fish and chips. Cheaply produced, Provençal rosés are intended to be drunk at their youthful, cheerful best as an undemanding summer refreshment, not designed for long-haul travel, lengthy residences on over-heated shop shelves and the scrutiny of wine critics.
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Left: the west bank of the southern Rhone Valley. TAVEL is the only appellation in France allowed to make rosé wine only; it trades off this exclusivity to claim the best rosé wines in France. Tavel producers often bottles roses from LIRAC as well and surrounding CÔTES DU RHÔNE vineyards (the shaded area). |
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2) THE TRUTH
But don't dismiss rosé wine just yet. Move just a little north from the Provençal appellations and at the foot of the Rhône valley you'll find some of the very best rosé wines in the world, including an appellation, Tavel, entitled to make rosé wine only. The best rosé wines from Tavel, nearby Lirac and the surrounding Côtes du Rhône valley can be serious, ambitious wines that succeed in offering both summer refreshment and serious food accompaniment. They are a vibrant translucent rose-pink in color, offer up a nose that even the most inexperienced wine taster would recognize as overflowing with strawberry and cherry, are often surprisingly bone dry - though this is usually offset by the refreshing acidity - and tend to be full-bodied, rich and spicy, carrying a serious alcoholic clout. They can make immediate converts out of the most cynical of wine drinkers, so much so that their style is currently being imitated (but not bettered) by California's Rhône Rangers. Moreover, they are not much more expensive than the rosé wines from the Provençal appellations (at least those that reach international shelves), and when considering the price of good red and white wines, the peak price of around $15 for a top level Tavel seems perfectly good value in my eyes.
These rosé wines are mostly made using the same blends as the local red wines, and by being pressed in one of two ways. The first is to stack them up in stainless steel tanks, in which their weight creates a light crushing; after a couple of days in contact with their skins, the juice is run off. The second method, called saignée in France, is to bleed some pink wine off the top of a vat during the early stages of a red wine's maturation. The remaining red wine supposedly becomes more concentrated as a result.
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3) The Wines.
The easy-going rosés of Provençal holiday infamy tend to come from the Côtes de Provence - in which rosé wines account for a stunning 75% of production - and surrounding appellations such as Coteaux d'Aix-en-Provence, Les Baux de Provence and Coteaux du Varois. Here, the most common grapes used are Grenache and Cinsault, with some of the little-known Tibourin added for flavor. Supposedly superior examples available in the States are usually in the five to ten dollar range and many come in the tourist-friendly "skittle" style bottle, but a recently tasted example from one of Les Baux' better producers, the 2000 Mas de Gourgonnier, fell apart completely in the glass. There are some nice enough rosés made in the regions of the Côtes du Ventoux and Côtes du Luberon, which are to all intents and purposes parts of Provence that fall under the Rhône wine umbrella. But at a recent blind tasting of some summer rosés from the last two vintages, the Domaine Fendrèche 2000 from Côtes du Ventoux finished last: it was simply too light and fizzy to recommend.
Better head into the Rhône proper, and especially, up the western bank of the Rhône river, where the wine makers of Tavel often spread their wine-making tentacles into the nearby appellation of Lirac and surrounding Côtes du Rhônes. For this reason, the same names often come up when discussing Rhône rosés. Domaine Pélaquié, for example, bottles both a Tavel and a Lirac rosé. Domaine de la Mordorée, which makes Lirac's most acclaimed red and white, bottles one of the very best Tavels, and a very good Côtes du Rhône rosé (but not a Lirac rosé). And so on.
 Among the Côtes du Rhône rosés, the Domaine de la Mordorée 2000 ($12) is excellent. The picture here shows its vibrant color it (people sometimes talk of a 'salmon' hue, but this closer to a pure red as far as I can tell), and while the nose of strawberries and cherries was at first somewhat muted, in the mouth it came quite alive, with a good attack, a refreshing zippiness and a nice long finish.
To be honest, you don't see too many rosés carrying the Côtes du Rhône banner, but rather those from higher up or further down the appellation heirachy. Still, one popular producer is that omnipresent négociant, Guigal, whose Côtes du Rhône Rosé 1999 scored a 90-point rating in the Wine Spectator with the accompanying note from the reviewer that it "the best rosé I've ever had." Despite the presence of some 7,500 cases of the stuff, I couldn't track one down to put it to the taste test; presumably the score and the $10 tag put paid to that. Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, that very same reviewer in the same issue rated the Guigal 1999 Tavel a dismal 73 ("bittery and a bit papery.") Having not found this wine either, I can't argue the point, but it would surprise me that a wine-maker of Guigal's pedigree, who only makes two rosé wines, would allow such an enormous difference in quality between them to escape his cellars. I would certainly be happy to test out Guigal's Tavel and will do so with the next vintage as soon as I see it.
Lirac rosés are even more scarce on foreign ground, which allows me to start waxing rhapsodic about Tavel. This appellation has been accused by many a wine writer of resting on its laurels - its fame as the only rosé-only appellations leads it to claim also to be the best appellation for rosé too, and apparently the town itself serves as little more than a tourist wine-trap. But my experiences with Tavel rosés have been revelatory. More than any other example of a pink/blush wine I have come across in the world, these are reds in disguise, full of flavor and fruit and with the kind of strength and texture that will convince you you're drinking a serious wine.
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The wines of TAVEL usually come in tall, slim bottles featuring the appellation crest.
L-R: Three stellar examples of the 1999 vintage from Domaine Lafond, the négociant Paul Jaboulet-Aîné and Domaine Pélaquié. |
Perhaps it's my good fortune that only a handful of Tavel producers - the best - seem to be popular with the importers. One of them is another big négociant, Paul Jaboulet-Aîné, who eschews producing southern Rhône whites in favor of a full bodied, fully flavored, widely available Tavel. I've been through several bottles of the Jaboulet Tavel L'Espiegle 1999, which has a brilliant bright red color, an explosive nose of strawberries, a good attack, and then that Tavel whammy - an astringent, even austere finish that would certainly cause many a casual summer sipping rosé drinker to fall off their deck chair. That austerity is the reason Tavel is such a good food wine: put it up against some garlic and olive-oil infused dish full of herbs, and the balance is near perfect. At around $15, Jaboulet's Tavel is expensive. But yes, it is worth it.
Château D'Aqueria is another esteemed Tavel producer, fermenting a complex blend of Grenache, Clairette, Cinsault, Mourvèdre, Bourboulenc and Syrah in stainless steel vats, then bottling the wine after six months (the usual short maturation period for rosés). Its 1998 was probably my first Tavel, a real eye-opener; with 25,000 cases produced annually, I'm surprised I don't see more of it in the States. Then again, its reputation precedes it.
I've only had one Tavel from Domaine de la Mordorée (a '99 several months ago), but it was damn near perfect, hitting that ideal balance of weight, elegance, fruit and acidity, all wrapped up in that heady nose of cherries, raspberries and strawberries. And at our recent blind tasting, Domaine Lafond's 1999 ($13) beat off all-comers, with a lighter color than some of the others but much richer on the palate with a stronger, lengthy, spicy finish. With over 16,000 cases around, you should be able to find this wine all the way through to the 2000 vintage.
We've also been through several bottles of Domaine Pélaquié's Tavel since the 1998 vintage. My notes on the '99 have been consistent: a stellar example of austerity and acidity meeting flavorful fruit and all over balance. The 2000, the first Tavel I've yet seen from the vintage, came in to a local store in early August 2001 and I rushed a chilled bottle home for $14 to open it. Before I popped the cork, something on the label caught my eye. My Oxford Companion to Wine states clearly under its Tavel entry that "the appellation enforces a maximum alcoholic strength of 13.5%." Well, someone needs to tell Mr Luc Pélaquié, because he admits to a phenomenal 14.5% on this latest bottling. Does this make it the strongest rosé in existence? It certainly tastes like it. A rosé by color as well as by name, it was positively gushing with that heady nose of strawberries and cherries that denotes a good southern Rhône rosé. It was remarkably full-bodied, even for a Tavel. Quite tannic, in fact (yes, you can get tannins from a rosé wine, they're red grapes after all), very dry - though with that lovable hint of sweetness you get from the grenache and cinsault, the only grapes used in Pélaquié's saignee method Tavel - and with an enormously long, austere, spicy finish.
Lacking, however, was the crisp acidity one also associates with a fresh young rosé. Its absence seems to suggest a precarious future - especially as, with the summer here in the States coming to a close, this wine will be on the shelves through the next twelve months. Hopefully, the lack of acidity, its heavy alcohol content and abundant tannins won't render it a blunt instrument by then.We shall see. Given the alcohol content of this rosé, I dread to think what the red wines are going to shape up like. Global warming or what?
It's worth a brief mention of the Rhône Rangers from California, who generally bottle their rosés as "vin gris" (though they're not grey at all!) I've had sufficiently pleasant examples from Zaca Mesa and Bonny Doon, but Cline's Oakley Vin Gris 2000, which went up against the Rhône and Provençal rosés in our recent tasting, proved classically Californian over-the-top in everything except price tag, which was typically Cline friendly, a mere $7. At half the price of a Tavel, I can forgive them their excesses.
Still, is Tavel the best rosé wine I've ever tasted? No. That honor falls to the rosés of Bandol, at the very foot of Provence, right on the Mediterranean coast. As with the region's reds, the Bandol rosés are primarily Mourvèdre, one of the most individual of grapes and one that responds very much to terroir, with Bandol its spiritual home. The result is a whole different complexity of taste, another full notch higher than the best Tavels. Then again, the wine makers seem to know what they're onto: Bandols from top makers like Château Pradeaux and Domaine Tempier easily top twenty dollars, even pushing towards thirty. Yes, they're worth it for a sublime experience, but if you want a warm weather drinking experience that exceeds your past expectations, the aforementioned estates from the Côtes du Rhône appellation, Lirac and Tavel - not to forget the efforts of the better négociants - will absolutely reward you.
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4) CURIO CORNER:
 The east bank of the Rhône is considered a wasteland when it comes to rosés. However, a Gigondas 2000 from Domaine du Gour de Chaulé has recently shown up, around the pricey $15-$17 mark. I was a sucker for this for four reasons: 1) I love Gigondas. 2) Gour de Chaulé is a reputable producer that doesn't follow trends. (Madame Bonfils has only just released her 1997 red Gigondas while other estates are already onto the '99s.) 3) I love Rhône rosés. 4) I was researching this story.
I can't put hand on heart and say this was better than any of the Tavels I've tasted or even Mordoree's Côtes du Rhône. It was a little lighter in color than some, had abundant strawberries (if nothing else) but was every bit as rustic as a Gigondas red. I've used the word austere a few times on this page: how about calling this one severe? Then again, I made the cardinal sin of allowing the wine to warm up. Rhône rosés should always be heavily chilled, even cooler than the whites. When the wine went back in the fridge, it lasted almost a week thanks to its crisp acidity. I'll be back for another at some point, but more so to verify my initial notes than desert the proven rosé experts of the Rhône's west bank.
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5) ROSÉ REMINDERS:
1) Always buy the youngest vintage available. Despite possessing both acidity and tannins, the fruit disappears quickly from a rosé.
2) And always chill them. It's amazing how rapidly a perfectly fruity rosé loses its appeal and turns alcoholic as it warms up in the glass.
TONY FLETCHER, AUGUST 2001
(All prices referred to are those paid in New York retail stores.)
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iJamming! Site Copyright Tony Fletcher 2000.
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