Rosé wines

Addy Bassin's MacArthur Beverages (on MacArthur Boulevard) is my favorite wine store in DC, at least for European wines. They have a simply outstanding selection of French, German and Italian wines with great Austrian and Spanish. The staff is expert, not just knowledgeable, and get out to visit the vineyards. Their recommendations are very reliable.

They have wine tastings most every Saturday and we get down there every six to eight weeks. Yesterday they had five rosé wines out -- a couple from Provence, a Virginia wine, a Cote du Rhone and a Bordeaux.

We liked both the Provencale wines, found the Virginia wine very drinkable but did not much care for either the Rhone or Bordeaux by comparison.

The one we ended up buying was a 2008 Domaine de Triennes, the second of the two Provencale wines we tasted. It is fruity and dry at the same time, in the wonderful flinty way that many French wines have. It is made from the Cinsault grape, according to the Triennes Web site, and the 2008 cépage won a gold medal.

The vineyard is at Nan-les-pins and was purchased at the end of 1989 by Aubert de Villaine and Jacques Seysses, two Burgundy vintners who were looking for a property in the Var. The former Logis de Nans is located east of Aix-en-Provence on a southern facing slope comprising 46 hectares of limestone terroir. It was renamed Triennes in the honor of the Triennia, bacchanalian feasts that happened every three years during Roman times. The photo above shows the vineyard.

Rosé is made by letting the skins soak in the first press to give it the color. It has historically been ignored by wine snobs as a cheap table wine and it will probably never rise to the refinements of the great varietals and labels. But they are taken more seriously now.

There was a huge fight in the European Union this spring over a proposed edict from Brussels that would allow vintners to mix red and white together and label it rosé instead of going through the longer, and more expensive process of making a true rosé. Many people probably think that's the way rosé is made anyway, but the French led the fight against this new rule. It would be like mixing Coke and Sprite together and selling it as root beer -- just not the same.

Fortunately, the campaign was successful and the rule was abandoned, so that rosé from Europe at least will continue to be made in the traditional way.

We drank a lot of rosé during our recent trip to France, which was in Languedoc just at the border with Provence. There were numerous Cote du Rhone vineyards there and we bought the wine at local organic vintner, Natura. It was a pale rosé (rosé gris), very light and delicate, and perfect for the climate and the food.

The Triennes is somewhat more robust and fruitier. It was our first choice, though the other Provencale wine, Whispering Angel, was a close second. They were similar, but the Triennes seemed more elegant. The Boxwood from Virginia was also quite good, much like the Virginia rosé we had last week at the farm dinner.

The tasting price for the Triennes was $13.99 a bottle, compared to the normal $15.99. That's more than we usually pay for a rosé, but that's why they have tastings.