It's Hot and I'm Thirsty

The temperature is soaring towards 100 degrees in Sonoma County - California Wine Country this week, and suddenly a glass of warm red wine isn’t very appealing. No, when it’s hot outside I prefer a cold wine--either a simple, clean white or even better, an icy dry rose.

I like to say that no one plans to make dry rose and holds aside grapes for that purpose (except Sola Rosa, a Sonoma County winery whose sole focus is dry rose). Rose in California is almost always the byproduct of “bleeding off” tanks.

After crush, winemakers put red in tanks to ferment. The grape skins float to the top, and winemakers like to see a certain ratio of skins to juice. If there’s too much juice, the wine can end up thin. So winemakers drain juice from the bottom of the tank, and either capture it to make dry rose, or down the drain it goes with the itsy bitsy spider.

Wine Country visitors this time of year will find a dry rose at about every 3rd stop. Here in the U.S. we still have the “white zinfandel hangover,” believing that pink is bad. But give dry rose a try—it may just become your summer go-to wine.