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Health & Fitness

A Rosé is a Rosé is a Rosé: The Perfect Wine for Grilling and Chilling

In praise of the best all around summer wine, Rosé.

Why drink rosé wines?

1-Rosé – the hotter it is,  the better they taste
White wines go numb when they are ice cold but rosé, with all the flavors and depth from the red grape skin contact, hold up when chilled. So on those really hot days you can drink really cold rosé and it doesn't lose its flavor.

2-Rosé: drink them like reds but treat them like whites
Rosé is traditionally made from red grapes through a shortened period of skin contact. When red is made from red grapes, the grapes are crushed and pressed and the skins are left in with the grapes in order to extract the red color. Without skin contact red grapes would produce an almost white wine, with a lot of contact they produce red wine, and with a little contact a rosé wine is produced. The point is that this pink wine is basically a very, very light red wine and its flavor profile is that of red wine however it has very little tannin, is lighter bodied, and it's served chilled, like a white wine.

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3-Rosé is "The ketchup of wine" – it can be used on just about every kind of food.
Rosé is great by itself for contemplating sunny days but it is also a versatile food wine that enhances a wide variety of  foods just as ketchup enhances a burger and fries. Rosé is great with: grilled food especially grilled seafood and vegetables, beef salads, pork sausages, fresh ham, baked ham, really good Iberico ham, Pizza and calzones, picnics.  See next post for a recipe for grilled pizza. The crust turns out wonderfully toasted and reminds you of pizza from a wood fired oven.

4-Rosé colored glasses of wine come in many different shades: Rosé is made from a huge range of red grapes and in styles from bone dry to sweet, light to heavy, even sparkling and still so they are NOT all the same.

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5-Rosé is made just about everywhere: It is made throughout the Mediterranean; Greece, Italy, France, Spain all produce a lot of red grapes but have warm summers so rosé is the perfect solution. The typical varieties used are Grenche, Syrah, Cinsault in southern France though rosé is produced in Burgundy, Bordeaux, Alsace even Champagne as well. Spain uses a lot of Garnacha in making their rosados. Italy uses their local varieties in their rosatos:  for example Sangiovese up north, Negroamaro and Malvasia Nera in Puglia. The rest of the world is in on it too. Rosé is produced in north and south America, South Africa, Australia, everywhere.

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