Make It Pink! A Wine for All Seasons

Class transcript:

Mother's Day to everyone joining us. We are thrilled to have you on this very special Sunday to celebrate not only the wonderful gift that is Rosé, but certainly the wonderful gift that is all of you in the audience playing along at home. Thank you all so much for joining us. We are, as we are wont to do, just giving I'm going to give the stragglers a few more moments to get in the mix here. Christian Conner has schnitzel, well played. Christian Conner, well played. Schnitzel and Rosé sounds like a Mother's Day fit for a queen, or Christian Conner. Just for the sake of provisioning for this lesson, part of what we are celebrating is the wonderful diversity of Rosé. Rosé is a hybrid, hybrid style.

It encompasses some of the qualities of white wine, some of the qualities of red. And the most amazing thing about it, in my mind, is that fluidity and the fact that you have wines like the Provençal, kind of classic Provençal wine, to my left here in this preposterous bottle, that, you know, lean more white wine-like. And then you have this sturdy Tavel from literally Azucro flies, not more than a few dozen miles from Provence. And, you know, it's practically red wine. You know, there are red Burgundies marketed as red wines that, you know, share this color. So Rosé encompasses both extremes. And my hope is that you all get a taste of that today. But there is no wrong way to drink Rosé. John Bon Jovi will tell you as much.

He makes his own Rosé. He drinks it over ice as a spritzer. There's nothing wrong with drinking Rosé over ice. There's nothing wrong with drinking it out of the bottle. It's a wine that is just fit for, you know, Sunday fun and Mother's Day. So wherever you're enjoying your Rosé, drink it however you like. There is no wrong way to enjoy these wines. We are at 4-2. I'm just going to give it one more minute before we officially kick off proceedings. With me, as always, is Sarah Thompson. Say hello, Sarah Thompson. Oh, hello. There you go. See, we're getting better with our muting and unmuting capabilities here. I'm being unmuted. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, well done, Sarah Thompson. Thank you so much for joining us. Is your mom in the mix there?

She is, yeah. Well, everybody say hello to Sarah's mom. Happy Mother's Day to you. Excellent. Well, let's kick it off here. Yes. Welcome, one and all. Happy Mother's Day, of course. I have a special anniversary greeting as well for David, Kirsten, and Lucas in the mix. They are actually celebrating their anniversary and Mother's Day. For Kirsten, it is one-stop shopping, truly. They were hoping to escape their children and join us as they did last year at Tail-Up Goat to celebrate their anniversary. That is not possible, so they are joining wine class. We're sorry that you can't escape your kids, but we are thrilled to have you guys in the mix and want to wish you a wonderful anniversary.

We are into week seven; I feel like we're at the point where the new normal is no longer new, it's just normal now for better or worse. And we are all in this alone together for longer than initially anticipated, and we are adjusting to that reality. I'm thrilled to have this virtual forum to host you in the midst of it. Thank you all for your donations to our employee relief fund as we move forward, that said, we're going to be broadening our scope and refocusing our efforts for the sake of our fundraising and directing those donations if you're in a position to make them to our community fund. We are the partner Miriam's Kitchen; they do amazing work to address the needs of one of the most vulnerable communities in our city, the homeless community.

They are such a special organization, and we are thrilled to work with them. So wine class is free as always, but if you do feel like contributing. We ask that you give to Miriam's one more special announcement to follow after class here, that's a little teaser encouragement for you all to stay in the mix but very special happenings to be announced at the tail end of our Rosé lesson today. So as always, a bit of verse to kick things off and naturally a bit of Mother's Day inspired verse going out to my mom in the audience; this is William Butler Yeats - The angels are stooping above your bed, they They weary of trooping with the whimpering dead. God's laughing in heaven to see you so good.

The sailing seven are gay with his mood. I sigh that kiss you for I must own that I shall miss you when you have grown. My mom Patricia is in the audience somewhere and that is a poem that she used to read to me as an infant. I, you know, sit before you, proud restaurant owner, occasional virtual wine teacher, but the road from awkward adolescent to virtual wine was, you know, occasionally rocky and my mom was a continual source of inspiration and comfort throughout the journey. I love you, mom, and I toast to you. Patricia Kay loves her rosé, so this seems a fitting topic for our side of the Sunday wine class. Much like our consideration of sparkling wine, we're dealing with a genre here.

You know, rosé, it is not- So before you get started, really quickly, we just wanted to talk about John, really quickly, and his James Beard nomination. Oh, I'm deeply sorry. Thank you, thank you. Well, let's; so we have many toasts to deliver throughout this class above and beyond the customary toast. I got, you know, so deep. Deep in my, you know, Yates and Mother's Day celebratory, you know, spirit that I forgot to acknowledge one - John Seibert. Congratulations to you, John Seibert, on your James Beard Award nomination. Cheers. We hope there's an award show to go to, but at any rate, well-deserved and long overdue, sir. Congratulations to you, buddy. Thank you, sir. For the sake of rosé, should be said we're dealing with a broad category.

So, you know, it's somewhat preposterous to some extent to consider rosé as a class topic. It's like considering white wine or red wine as a class topic. And, you know, I hope as part of this lesson, we get beyond the blanket consideration of these wines as, you know, belonging to this kind of marketing niche that is pink and that we begin to understand them as, you know, more terroir-driven entities, as wines, you know, that speak to a sense of place in a particular way that just happens to be various shades of pink. Without putting the cart before the horse, should be said that this color, this hue derives from the grape skins. All wine, be it, you know, pink or red, gets its color from anthocyanins pigments in the grape skins.

And the color has a huge psychological effect, you know, it's a bit like the Shakespearean, a rose by any name, a wine by any color. I played around with drinking wine out of a black glass. I played around for the sake of our staff with dying a rainbow's worth of rosés dark enough that you can't tell the difference one from the other. And it is a fascinating exercise. And, you know, if you have some red food coloring on hand and extra wine at the end, it is a fun exercise to take two wines that otherwise would be different colors and make them the same hue. And, you know, consider how your perception differs by mere virtue of the color. And, you know, much as we eat with our eyes, we drink with our eyes too.

And the color has, you know, these subtle psychological, you know, bearings on how we experience what is in the glass. And that's not, you know, insignificant. It's important for the sake of evaluating a wine. Historically, rosé is no mere novelty. You know, much of what the world was drinking in the days of Dionysus and, you know, his Greek underlings, you know, we would consider rosé. You know, these are wines that would come from a mixed set of white and red grapes. The Greeks always diluted their wine. There was a whole set of rituals attached to preparing the wine. They considered it a mark of barbarity to drink undiluted wine. The Cyclops went mad because he was drinking wine undiluted. The Greeks shared a wine that was called rosé.

And they shared this love throughout their empire. And they established colonies throughout the Mediterranean. Ultimately, one city-state in Massalia, which is the site of modern-day Marseille, which is in the heart of Provence. And they produced a famous pink wine that the Romans developed a taste for and spread throughout the Mediterranean in antiquity. That was really kind of the first whispering angel of its kind, Massalia. Flash forward to the 16th century and the major wine on the streets of London is a style of Bordeaux called claret, which we discussed in the context of our Cabernet class. And claret comes from, the root for clarity refers to the fact that this, you know, wine from a proud red wine producing region was in its 16th century incarnation, essentially rosé.

It looked more like the Travel most likely than the Provençal rosé. I have here, but it was the wine of choice for several centuries. So there's this long proud history of drinking pink wines and it kind of comes and fits and starts as any fad does. Rosé suffers in terms of its modern reputation because of its association with couple iconic post-World War II brands. For whatever reason, the world emerged from the Second World War and everyone developed a sweet tooth. It had, I'm sure, a lot to do with the, you know, situation between the wars of being in the midst of a Great Depression and, you know, being honest to God hungry and coming out of that, I can understand, you know, wanting to mainline Pixie Stix, but people did it for the sake of their wine as well.

Most famously through the ages of Lancers and Mateus, two hugely popular Portuguese brands that, you know, first created this association, you know, with wine, you know, this association for people between rosé and sweet wine. So those are two Portuguese wines. They were fruity, juicy, and incredibly sweet. And they were so successful that the dry rosé category, the rosé pink wine category without leftover sugar at the end of fermentation, essentially disappeared from American markets until the 90s and early aughts. It persisted nonetheless in that historic heart of, you know, of rosé making, Provence. And we're going to consider Provence for the sake of my first wine. I imagine a lot of you at home are drinking Provençal rosés. I would say that part of the lasting appeal of rosé is, you know, this transformative, evocative quality it has.

Provence is one of the most cartoonishly beautiful places in the world. You know, you think lavender, you think seaside, you think, you know, eating bouillabaisse with these adorable little, you know, sailing ships in some cartoonishly beautiful, you know, Mediterranean harbor with, you know, menacing Russian oligarchs in their yachts looming cartoonishly over you. But it is hugely beautiful. And it just so happens that they make an incredible wine in rosé that people have begun to associate with the place itself. And Provence has a long history of winemaking. The name of the region itself comes from the Latin, our province, and refers to the fact that it was one of the first kind of large colonies the Romans established outside of their original kind of, the original heart of their empire in Italy.

And it quickly in the Roman era became a major wine producing region on into the modern era. Sadly, Provence, you know, it's a little bit of a, you know, a little bit of a time travel, but Provence doesn't get credit for how amazing its wines are across the board. They make amazing red wines in particular, but the vast majority of their production consists of rosé. I'll consider mine here. It comes from Château de Saint-Martin, which is one of 23 Grands Crus in Provence. Provence, like Bordeaux, has a classification for the greatest estates. There are 23 of them. And this comes from one of them. It comes in this preposterous bottle that my wife likened it to, like duty-free, like, you know, perfume. That is entirely a marketing vehicle, it should be said.

You know, there is nothing historic about this shape. We spoke to one method that the ancients used for making a wine pink, and that was mixing red and white grapes. Now, that has frowned upon them in the modern era. The one exception being champagne, actually. Champagne, under French law, is allowed to be made through mixing white and red wine. And that's because adding red wine late in the production process in champagne ensures more stability of color. But anywhere else you see a designated rosé in France, by law, it is made according to a different method. In the case of this wine, you're dealing with something that's direct press. So, it comes predominantly, exclusively in this case, actually, from red varietals. So, I'm dealing with Tiburon, Grenache, and Terignan.

Tiburon is a quirky little grape that only shows up in tiny corners of Provence. And it has this, you know, wonderful, what the French call, kind of, quality of grigue about it. Grigue is, you know, it's like that lavender, it's those hardy brush. And that, you know, herbage trampled underfoot. That gives you the smell of, you know, thyme, and, you know, oregano, and sage, and, you know, the kind of hardy flowers. And Tiburon expresses that very uniquely in the glass. It tends to be floral as well, and that's something it transmits for the sake of rosé. This particular wine, it's not the most complex offering in the world. The one that I'm drinking, it's full of, you know, kind of, you know, in my mind, you know, crunchy orchard fruit, you know, florality.

There's something wonderfully zesty about it, though. And there's this kind of faint bitterness on the back end. And that comes from the brief skin contact it gets. And this one is, you know, direct press. So they probably manipulated the press cycle for the sake of this wine. So that was sufficiently slow that the juice, as the grapes pressed very slowly, saw a little bit of contact with the red grape skins, and took on a bare, you know, freshness. You know, hint of color, but they didn't leave it to soak on the skins any longer thereafter. Otherwise, it would have gotten significantly more red. And those are all grapes, the ones that are cultivated in Provence, that tend to give their red wines a lot of color.

So you have to be very careful about limiting the skin contact if you want to make a wine like this. The French historically would have called this like 'Wal de Pedrique', which is 'eye of the partridge'. And it's this, this onion skin, this pale pink, this, you know, ethereal, you know, kind of wine. And I think in the modern era, when people say Rosé, this is a Rosé that they think of. This is the archetype of the Provençal Rosé by and large. Sarah, did anyone have any questions about what they're drinking at home for the sake of their lighter offerings today? There we go. I knew it was gonna happen, everyone. Very exciting. For those of you who had questions, I know that you're there.

417 on the wine school uh when will bill mess up the unmute feature on the podcast you guys win uh 417 was the uh the make or break time on the over under sarah thompson what are the questions oh hi um what do you mean by crunchy what is that when you describe a wine uh excellent question in my mind crunch is like biting into a green apple um you know it's that you know mouth watering uh acidity um very often uh these are wines that uh intentionally are uh made uh and have malolactic fermentation uh inhibited so malolactic fermentation is uh this process that happens at the uh end of initial uh fermentation when you make a wine and it converts harsh malic green apples into um you know more kind of yogurty creamy uh lactic acid um and very often uh winemakers Working with uh rosés, um like the one I have on my left, will intentionally inhibit that and they can do that a couple ways.

They can lower the temperature um in uh the tank. They can add a bit of sulfur to kill off whatever um malolactic producing bacteria might still be in the mix and um through doing so you end up with more green apple and less yogurt um and you know for me um that profile, you know gives uh wine, you know this wonderfully crunchy quality and that's something I look for um in a Provençal rosé and it's none of that but there's like a zestiness, there's just a lot of meat um about it, it's a flirty fun uh little little Number and, and I really dig that. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between some of the terminology of skin contact wine, so rosé versus orange versus gris?

Oh, these are excellent questions, um so uh bone gris um is a essentially l'entennoir. So we previously established that the color in wine uh derived from pigments uh anthocyanins largely in the skins of grapes and if you press the grape juice directly off the skins you end up with clear juice varying degrees of clear juice depending on how delicate you are about that, in the case of bone gris, you're so delicate about that there's barely any color at all in the Resultant wine it might be even lighter in hue than the offering that I have here for True Bon Gris. So it's almost like that, you know, just a step beyond Blanc Renoir. For the sake of pink versus orange, you can think about it as, you know, these wines that are, you know, fluid, that are interspecies, you know, they're not white, they're not red, but they're coming at it essentially from different angles.

So for the sake of pink wine, you have some red grapes in the mix, otherwise there would be no red issue. So some red grapes in the mix, but the project of making rosé is all about limiting the amount of skin contact. So limiting the amount of the contact between the juice and the skins to, you know, ultimately allow the wine to take on that color. In the case of orange wine, you're approaching it from the opposite extreme. So you're dealing with a wine that is exclusively made with white grapes, but instead of pressing the juice directly off the wine, you're pressing the juice directly off the wine. You're pressing the juice directly off the skins as they would typically for the sake of white wine, they leave the white grape skins in the mix.

So as opposed to limiting skin contact, you are essentially ramping it up. So orange wine is essentially a white wine made like a red wine. So they're kind of, you know, yin to the yang there. And I will say like people will often use the word skin contact as an overarching style for pink and orange, but it's never really like worked for me. You know, red wine is like the original skin contact wine. You know, it's just, I think it's misleading, you know. And at what point does, you know, white wine become orange wine? Does a wine like Tavel become, you know, red? You know, let's quit trying to put all this shit in a box people and just like, let it be, you know, whatever the hell it wants to be, you know?

You know, let's live in the mystery a little bit and not, you know, try to, you know, pre-prescribe, you know, some kind of, you know, little category for everything that, you know, ultimately goes into a bottle. All right. Well, I have one last thing to throw at you. I love this question. Do varietals and rosé manifest in the same or different ways than they would in red form? That is an amazing segue, Sarah Thompson. So I didn't touch on varietals for the sake of my wine. I mentioned Tiberon. I touched on Grieg. I have a couple of visual aids, which is, you know, hugely exciting for you all in the audience, I know. There is a varietal imprint for the sake of rosé. It's different than the varietal imprint for the sake of red wine.

There are some grapes that derive a huge part of what they are and the kind of wines they are associated with because of their structure, because of their tannins. And if you throw them in the mix, in the context of a rosé, you get something that's hugely different than what you would get in a typical red wine. In other instances, there's more continuity. You know, you can pick out an individual varietal in a rosé. And for me, those are some, like, really fun rosé moments. Some of my favorite rosés are like Chinon makes an amazing rosé. Sarah, I think you have a Cab Franc rosé in the mix at Shea Thompson. And Cab Franc has this really distinctive, herbaceous signature. Very often, the grapes for rosé are plump, which is a little early.

It's a means of insurance. It's a means of, for the sake of red grapes, ensuring, you know, that crunchiness that I talked about, you know, that zippiness, that higher acid. But because of that, a grape like Cabernet Franc that tends to take on these, like, greener, more herbaceous characters when it is a little underripe expresses more of that in a rosé. And that can either be fun, if you're into it, or less fun, if you're not into it. For the sake of, you know, Grenache, you get, you know, and then the Tavel that I'm drinking here is Grenache heavy. You know, you get this, like, candied, almost tussiny fruit, you know, this, like, cherry cough drop thing happening that, you know, Grenache does, which I find, you know, hugely exciting.

So typically, if you're looking for it, there is a through line. And I think the most interesting rosés are the ones that, you know, speak to a sense of place and have more going on than just, you know, I want to drink this with Bon Jovi, you know. There's something else happening there. But for the sake of Provençal rosés, the classic grape is Sanseau. I want to perform a valuable public service here. This is one of the most oft improperly pronounced grapes in the wine lexicon. I'm not going to be able to hear you, but everyone say it with me. This looks like it should be said, like, qu'on saute. But in French, it sounds so much prettier, 'is Sanseau, Sanseau.' It is the classic Provençal rosé grape.

And it is aromatic and hugely floral. It tends not to produce wines with a lot of tannic grip. And for that reason, for the sake of red wines, typically they just add it for a little bit of florality. Very often it's a blending partner. But in the case of a lot of Provençal rosés, it is the star player. Your other major players, for the sake of rosés, tend to be the, you know, K-pop band of the Rhône varietal world, the GSM triplets. So you've got Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvèdre also in the mix. And they each bring a little something different to the party. They are the classic grapes of particularly the southern Rhône Valley in France, which is where my Tavel hails from. And I like the way that Wine Folly has arranged this chart.

So they have, you know, these three different grapes. And it gives you a sense of what they bring to the mix. You know, I don't know how scientific these curves are, but the basic idea is that, you know, Syrah gives you lift. It gives you that, you know, front palate, you know, kind of brightness. And then Grenache flushes out the mid palate with fruit. And then Mavedre or Monastrell gives you that structure, that grip on the back end. And part of the, you know, reason they use those three grapes is that it gives you in different vintages a bit of insurance for the sake of what ripens well and what doesn't. Monastrell in particular or Mavedre famously late-ripening grape. And albeit, you know, very close to the Mediterranean and pretty far south, there are corners of Provence where you're at elevation.

And things might not ripen quite as readily as you would imagine. So in a year where you're Mavedre, you know, right? At least you had earlier ripening Syrah and Grenache to flush out the blend that you were working with. Now, we talked over some foreign contributors to the Rosé scene. I have yet to touch on very important American contributions to the genre. I wish I had like the Wayne's World kind of time machine feature here, but here you go. Okay. Imagine it's 1975. Captain and Tennille are racing up the charts. Sutter Home is making its famous Zinfandel. In order to make said Zinfandel, they employ a technique called saunier. Saunier means to bleed. And saunier involves taking wine out of the red tank.

So imagine yourself: You're pulling wine from the tank as your grapes are hanging out on the top for the sake of red wine making. You pull wine, you know, typically, you know, yeah, a day or two after the fact. And very often you do that for the sake of the red wine. The boys at Sutter Home, they wanted to make a better Zinfandel. But no one remembers the Zinfandel. We remember the white Zinfandel. Sutter Home is. The original white Zinfandel, in as much as Matthias and the Lancers set back American appreciation for Rosé shortly after World War II, white Zin deserves that credit after 1975. Now, this is a liter bottle. Apparently you can only buy Sutter Home white Zin in either, you know, that convenient, you know, pop in your purse.

And, you know. Take to a ball game if your mom sighs or the liter bottle that, you know, grandma hangs out with. My wife admonished me for drinking. I have a wine glass for the Sutter Home, but my wife looked at it and said, that's not the way you drink Sutter Home. So, Meredith, this is for you. Sutter Home. Yes, it tastes like raisins. It is a commercial product. Sutter Home is the largest family-owned, second-largest family-owned winery in the United States to this day. It's adult Sprite, you know, it does what it does well. You know, it is sweet, but it should be said, not unrefreshing and over ice, you know, get after it, grandma. So, sadly, I think this is what most people imagine or what most people did imagine of Rosé.

Until we came into the modern era, and, you know, it's fascinating to consider. I was reading all this trade lit about Rosé, and there is this famous sommelier in the West Coast who now makes Cali Pinot in Santa Barbara named Raj Parr. And he said he spent his whole career until 2009, didn't sell a bottle of Rosé, and then suddenly in 2009, you know, he couldn't not sell Rosé. And, you know, a lot of the sales charts for the Sutter Home are not the same. And, you know, for the sake of Rosé sales, look not unlike, you know, exponential growth curves. It is crazy. It should be said, too, that Washingtonians in particular are massive Rosé consumers. D.C. natives love their Rosé all day.

Switching gears from the hugely successful brand that is Sutter Home, I want to talk about the Tavel that I am drinking here. Tavel is special. Tavel has the only designation of origin for Rosé in France. So the entire appellation of Tavel is devoted to Rosé. So if you see a wine at a liquor store that says Tavel, by law, it is Rosé. But it is made in the same method as the White Zinfandel. It is made in the Saigné method. So Saigné wines, with the exception of Sutter Home, tend to be deeper, darker, and fuller bodied than direct press wines. They are more Venetian, if you will. They are more red wine like. And mine comes from a producer actually based in La Roque, which is an adjoining commune in the southern Rhône Valley.

But you are essentially circling around Châteauneuf-du-Pape. And there is a bit of an arms race in the bottle embossing game for the sake of the folks there. Started by the producers of Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Chateauneuf, because the village crest there is the Pope's keys to heaven. And if that is your village crest, it behooves you to put it everywhere you can. So they started slapping it in their bottles. And now all the adjoining villages want in on the action. So the Tavel crest, which is this kind of nondescript tea thing, is happening embossed on the bottle for those of you who can't see it at home. At any rate, Tavel is an age-worthy Rosé. You know, there is a misconception about age-worthiness in wine broadly when it comes to wines that aren't, you know, massive and dense and alcoholic and, you know, and tannic, fiercely tannic.

The truth of it is that a lot of Rosés, especially Rosé like this, that is fuller in body. So we're tipping the scales here at 14.5% alcohol. You know, that's not insignificant. You know, that is not, you know, your Hampton water. You know, this is serious wine. And as such, it is age-worthy wine. A fun thing happens to Rosé as it ages, and it loses this, like, strong primary fruit quality and takes on, you know, this, like, bloody kind of saline tonality. That's incredibly interesting in my mind. This is current vintage, so I don't really have any of that in the mix. I hope that, you know, some of you at home were able to get your hands on, you know, some deeper, darker, you know, colors. Rosé as well.

Because this is, for me, you know, the most interesting, you know, kind of sub-genre within the genre. This, you know, is it red or is it pink, you know, kind of beast. You know, I find hugely fascinating. You know, there are other wines in other regions a bit like this. So in Provence, in Bandol, which is a hugely famous Mourvèdre-heavy red wine, they turn out a Rosé that can be equally age-worthy. The Spanish very often. With Garnacha or Tempranillo. They'll turn out Rosados that are inkier and darker. In Italy, in Abruzzo, chiefly, along the Adriatic coast, they make a wine called Cerasuolo, which means cherry red. And is, by law, a deeper, darker hue. And then my favorite of the bunch being from Mount Etna.

They make a wine in a style called Pistri Mutto, which would have been a peasant's wine. You know, once upon a time, the wine itself didn't get, even if it was, you know, a little bit of color. It was considered red. Didn't get a ton of skin contact. You know, they would stop it after a day or two. Leaving wine on the skins in an era without refrigeration or reliable cold storage was an invitation for all sorts of microbiological mishaps. And so they usually cut it off. And, you know, you can imagine yourself as well as a vintner or farmer under the, you know, baking, you know, Etna sun, not wanting to drink, you know, this huge, massive, tannic red.

So the style of Rosé on Etna, from a grape called Norella Moschelesi, is very much, you know, comparable to the Tavel you see here. And what I love about, you know, this style of Rosé is the way it has of unlocking different types of food. Rosé really one of the ultimate food wines because it has both a little bit of that kind of white tonality, but also more that red fruit and red substance. And, you know, this for me, the Provençal Rosé, as delicious as it is, as, you know, fun as the bottle is to make something out of it. At some future date, you know, it functions more like a white wine. You know, in terms of the way it drinks, you know, if I was drinking it out of a black glass, you know, I like to think I would, you know, nail it as Provençal Rosé.

But if I'm being honest, I would just, you know, probably describe it as, you know, Vermentino or, you know, some kind of nondescript, you know, Mediterranean, crisp, easy drinking, you know, Greek islandy, what? But, you know, this is something else. This is something else. This is not quite red, but it's certainly not white either. It has, you know, some of the mouthfeel, some of the weight that, you know, the skins have started to impart for the sake of a day's worth of skin contact here and give it grip that, you know, make it, you know, sturdy enough to stand up against hardier dishes. And it's the kind of wine that can go with almost any food. And, you know, the wine itself changes. It's a bit of a mood ring.

So, you know, you eat it with, you know, sardines. It tastes one way. You eat it with steak, and it tastes another. And, you know, that's a wonderful journey of wines like this. And, again, I love the way they flout expectations. So, by and large, you know, people, to the extent that they're getting their Rosé on these days, they're thinking of, you know, fun bottles. They're thinking of, you know, let's chuck this back and drink it all day. They're not thinking of whatever Tovelo. You know? But, you know, nonetheless, for me, in a certain way, it embodies a spirit of the genre even more so than something like the Provençal Rosé I have to my left there. Just wanted to name drop a couple more specific, you know, wine regions and Rosés that I truly love.

I spoke about Chinon earlier. Chinon is Cabernet Franc. It has this, you know, graphitey, herbaceousness. That is truly lovely. In Burgundy proper, home to Pinot Noir, you have Marcenay, which is a commune at the northern end of the Cote d'Or. And Marcenay is famous for its Rosé in part because very often they couldn't reliably ripen their grapes enough to make true red Burgundy. So they did the next thing and they made Rosé. And what these, you know, places that make, you know, these amazing pink wines have in common is that, you know, they're not, you know, they're not the same. They're not falling back on, you know, the wine as a cliché. You know, they're not cynically, you know, branding, you know, inferior product as Rosé.

They're taking, you know, fruit that is as good as anything they're throwing into the red wine and putting it into Rosé. And until recently, that was relatively unique. And it should be said that given the global surge in Rosé popularity, you still have a lot of people, you know, throwing, you know, unremarkable fruit. Into unremarkable wines under the Rosé banner. And yeah, sure. It's great. You know, it works well as, you know, an alcoholic soft drink, you know. But it's not wine in the sense of having a sense of place and, you know, speaking to somewhere. You know, it's a delicious beverage in its own right. But, you know, I think much more interesting, the Tavels, the Marcenays, the Chinons of the world. You know, I named and dropped Bandol.

Last one I wanted to touch on. I think is a wonderful segue, you know, for the sake of, you know, the conversation about that skin contact genre. Romano. So Romano comes from the grape Pinot Grigio. I know what you're thinking. How do you make a Rosé from the grape Pinot Grigio? It should be said that Pinot Grigio on the vine very much looks like a red varietal. This, you know, Grigio itself, the word, you know, means gray. And it's a bit of a chimera, Pinot Grigio. And it has this, you know, kind of ruddy color to it. And if you, you know, leave that particular wine on the skins for any length of time, you know, ultimately what you end up with is something that is not, you know, you know, orange in a traditional sense.

You know, what you end up with is something that the Italians call Romato. And Romato means Auburn in Italian. And it speaks to this category of skin contact wines out of, you know, Friuli in northern Italy from Pinot Grigio that, you know, they're not quite white. They're not really orange either because they have, you know, some of this red hue in the mix. But they're certainly not pink either. You know. So, Romato is the ultimate genre de fire. And I love that about it. So, if you see Romato referred to anywhere on a label, they're speaking to a wine made from the Pinot Grigio grape left on the skins for a while. So, very different than the Pinot Grigio that I think most people have come to expect out of, you know, your average, you know, corner store.

Thompson, what do you have for the sake of questions? A lot of stuff. I'm going to ask a couple of housekeeping questions first, which are a couple of people have noticed that some of their rosés have slight carbonation to them. And they're wondering how common that is and how you can tell whether a wine is carbonated lightly like that before purchasing. Well, so, it is very, it would be very difficult to tell whether there was any carbonation in your wine prior to purchasing. You know, you do have some wines. Chocoli is a famous example. And Rosé Chocoli, which is from the Basque region of Spain, is hugely delicious. It comes from a grape largely called Andrabi Belsa, but often they blend white grape Andrabi Zuri in the mix as well.

And they intentionally leave a bit of CO2 in the mix. So, you can do that a few ways for the sake of the winemaking. In, you know, the most kind of benign artisanal manner. What they'll do is they'll just jazz. They'll jack it or blanket a tank before fermentation is totally finished. You know, much like you would with the Method Ancestral for making a sparkling wine. But they do it at the very end of production. So, you just capture that last little bit of spritz. And it's intentional. So, the CO2 does a lot of things. The CO2, even in a still wine, will act as a preservative. And there's always going to be some dissolved CO2 in a wine that even, you know, centrally is still.

A lot of German producers, in particular, or Austrian producers, they like to leave a little bit of that spritz. Because it gives some presence of freshness. That said, it could also be a winemaking flaw. You know, it could be that the bottle that you got re-fermented a little bit. Or, you know, they jacketed the tank a little early. And you ended up with something that had a bit of unintentional spritz to it. But, you know, very often it is a considered decision. And it's just about preserving, you know, some of that freshness in the end product. All right. Let's talk about stigma. Rosé, obviously. You know, rosé all day. A lot of people notice that these rosés are a bit cheaper than some of the other wines we've been drinking.

Is it worth swirling? Are there Grand Cru's? Are there, you know, notable rosés that beat above this kind of rosé all day punch? So, it should be said. I'm drinking a Grand Cru. The, you know, the rosé all day wine I have is from a Cru Class A. But it falls more in that, you know, kind of, you know, throw it back and don't think twice category. I think any wine seriously made, even wines unseriously made, you know, honestly, like the, you know, the Sutter Home, you know, is a fun sensory analysis. You know, and I find that I try not to, you know, create this, like, high culture divide for the sake of tasting things any more than you would for the sake of, you know, you know, eating an amazing taco or anything along those lines.

You know, the sensory experience of something is, you know, interesting and worthwhile, regardless of whether it comes from, you know, a massive factory or, you know, whether it comes from, you know, the most artisanal producer. And I, you know, I find the journey, you know, the smell, the taste, you know, I find it all hugely fascinating. You know, as much so for the sake of Sutter Home as other things. You know? And it's all information. You know? It's all, you know, kind of feeding you. Maybe it's not a meal you want to eat on a regular basis. But, you know, it's instructive nonetheless. The same way that, you know, eating things that you don't like or, you know, listening to music that you're not into is instructive. You know?

So, that's, you know, I'll say that. So, you know, don't skip. You know? Sutter Home you can evaluate the same way as you would any other, you know, restaurant. You know? Any other wine. There's an artificial smell. There's a certain artificiality to it on the nose. You know? But, you know, that's important. That's worth addressing too. You know? That's worth knowing about it. And, you know, it makes you appreciate the stuff that's not artificial all the more. You know? You know, that said, yeah, some wines are going to give you more to work with than others. You know? Just like, you know, you might be able to write, you know, a better review of, you know, a more interesting wine. A more interesting movie than, you know, I don't know.

I don't know how far I should follow that analogy. But at any rate, there's more going on here, it should be said. And, you know, again, I want to get past, you know, the genre trappings. The marketing gimmicks of rosé and treat the wine. You know, sure, it's fun. But it's more than just another Chardonnay. So, you know, the wine world is full of these facts. You know? In the 80s, it was buttery Chardonnay. In the 90s, it was, you know, Pinot Grigio. I don't know. Maybe I'm a decade or so behind. But, you know, I feel like, you know, the Provence, the typical Provençal rosé is, you know, that bad at the moment. And, you know, at some point, it will be something else. You know?

Maybe in ten years, people will be drinking mass-produced orange wine. And it will be like the hotness. You know? So, I think it's important to separate, you know, the trend from the hotness. And, you know, the wine for the sake of its enjoyment as someone that loves wine. And try to look past it. So, you know, I find, you know, these darker rosés very often a little more interesting because there is more going on. You know, that's not to say that there aren't, you know, lighter ones that are, you know, dynamic. But, you know, through that extra time on the skins for the sake of a Sagné wine, you know, you get, you know, more depth. You know, texturally, they're more interesting. Very often, they're more age-worthy.

So, you know, I would encourage you, if you think of rosé as a one-trick pony, to seek out more of the tavels of the world. And sometimes, you know, wine's, you know, it's important not to judge a book by color, by its color. So, you know, there are bandeau rosés that, you know, look like this. But, you know, are sturdier stuff because of the grapes they come from. So, you know, you know, seek out the right producers and, you know, approach it with an open mind. But, you know, in, you know, in mind. In my experience, these are some of the great, you know, joys. You know, the wines that, you know, are hard to pin down and make you eat twice.

And, you know, again, they're just, they're so fun for the sake of the table as well in terms of enjoying food alongside them. Somebody in the audience is drinking a Covevery rosé. Oh, yes. And they've got some burning plastic on the nose. That'll happen in a Covevery. So, Covevery, for the sake of those of you playing along at home, and I'll pull this up through the magic of screen share, is an amphora. It's a clay vessel, it should be said. Amphora is a type of clay vessel. Covevery, another. Covevery, originally from Georgia. Like the republic thereof in Transcaucasia, mind you. Not the state of Georgia, although same eponymous, you know, Christian saint. But neither here nor there. They are these teardrop-shaped amphora. And traditionally, they are buried in the womb of the earth.

And traditionally, in Georgia, all the wines are made on the skins. Whether they're from white grapes or red grapes. Now, Georgia, much as people have come around to the, you know, rosé craze. And they've been doing it for thousands of years in Provence. Georgia has been making white wine on the skins for thousands of years. They've been making wine in these teardrop-shaped vessels for thousands of years. And suddenly the world is into it. Under the banner of natural wine, just something that, you know, we will talk more about. But they tend not to work with a lot of modern winemaking interventions for the sake of making wine in conformity. The vessels themselves are very porous. And they invite all sorts of, you know, bad actors in terms of bacteria and stuff.

And different, you know, types of fermentation that typically in a more modern production context, you don't seek out. So, you're going to get, you know, sometimes volatile acidity. You know, other chemical constituents that give you like a Band-Aid or a sulfur kind of thing. And sometimes, if you swirl the glass enough, they blow off. Sometimes they don’t. You know, in small quantities, sometimes it’s enjoyable. In larger quantities, sometimes, you know, it poisons the well. So, it’s a bit of a, you know. You have to have kind of a, you know, a high tolerance, you know, for air sometimes in those wines. And, you know, one out of three might not work. But, you know, the two that do are all the more thrilling for it. People have a very serious question for you.

Yes. What are you going to do with the Sutter home? So, that was my wife’s first question. When she saw me come home with it. And I just don’t know. I just don't know. I don't really know anyone in my life that drinks Sutter home. You know, if there's anyone in the audience that, you know, lives in, you know, Columbia Heights or in Byron's, I'm happy to, you know, make a gift of what's left in my bottle. You know, maybe I'll do like an epic Sutter home Coke event, though. Maybe that's in my future. Who knows? I feel like that could be really interesting. You should baste a turkey with it. Sarah Wade. Yeah. So, yes. And it should be said that Rich does a famous.

So, in our audience, we have, you know, some regulars that famously baste a turkey with Manischewitz, which is another, you know, widely derided American product. And sweet red wine, in this case, as opposed to pink wine. But apparently makes a good turkey breast. I've never had Rich's Manischewitz braised turkey. But I think poultry would make a good use for the Sutter home. Yeah. That's pretty inspired, Sarah. Thank you. There are some incredible suggestions here. Oh, wow. Sutter home poached pears. Sutter home daiquiri. Sutter home jungle juice. The punch. Yeah. The punch is good. I might wait a day on that. But, yeah. I think we're going to need to reach out to the good people at Sutter Home.

And, you know, let them know that we crowd-sourced the Sutter home Lido bottle and that we're, you know, hoping to take it to brave new places. Thompson, I'm going to cut off additional questions because I want to make sure I get to my appointment announcement. We're going to circle back if there are any additional questions here. But I want to, you know, close things out with our customary toast. But I have some, you know, very exciting news first and foremost. So we've been talking about skin contact wines, orange wine, in the context of the rosé lesson, naturally. You all have been clamoring, chomping at the bit ever since I started Stay Home Wine School for an orange wine class. Well, you asked enough. You got it. So, Heidi, especially for you.

So lesson number eight will be orange wine, amber wine. Part of my hesitance, part of my resistance in crafting a class around orange wine is that, you know, they can be difficult to come by, these wines. There are a lot of, you know, retail outlets that sell, you know, wonderful, you know, kind of vintage wines. There are a lot of timeless, you know, kind of very classic offerings that make good subject matter for a class like this. But there aren't a lot of great retail outlets for the sake of orange wines. Well, we are going to be filling the gap ourselves. So as of this week, both Tail Up Goat and Reveler's Hour will be reborn. Like Fiery Phoenix will be reopening. For the sake of takeout and delivery.

Which will mean that all of your wine school wine, if you live in the DMV, can and hopefully will come from Tail Up Goat. I want to make sure that all of you participating remotely know that we're going to make sure that the subject matter is broad enough that you can provision outside the DMV. But we're really excited to bring in our own wine and get it out to you all. Directly. And for the sake of this week, that means orange wine. Now, we will be making our first deliveries of wine come Wednesday. That will be takeout and delivery. The website will go live tomorrow. And I'll have an announcement for you all with that link. We will start food service, dinner service on Friday. Tail Up Goat will be posted.

We're focusing on, you know, ready to eat items. We'll have food and wine at Reveler's Hour as well. Which will function more as a commissary. So get food for today. Hopefully at Tail Up Goat and food for tomorrow at Reveler's Hour. Now, we remain committed to social distancing. We remain committed to the safety of our guests and the safety of our staff throughout this process. And we will be, you know, continuing to practice social distancing. In all phases of life. That includes the kitchen and the dining room at Tail Up Goat. And all takeout and delivery will be contactless. We are clear that, you know, after eight weeks of having been away, that we need to find new ways to serve our community. And we are very excited to do that with you all. And certainly, this virtual wine class has been an important part of that. And I am hugely excited. I'm excited to continue to do that in a new and different format. So without further ado, before we break for questions, additional questions, I just want to toast to you all. Happy Mother's Day. Congratulations, Seniors Seibert. We love you all. Cheers. Alone. Together. As always.

All right. Sarah, what you got for me? And I'm happy. If you all have any questions about the reopening, you can feel free to throw those in the mix as well. We're even missing you guys. And we are thrilled to serve you all again in a different capacity. Quite a few questions coming up about the delivery and to-go. But one in particular about shipping to different states. Ah, there's the rub. So on the beverage side, it is a DC-only endeavor. So we do not have a retail license. We are benefiting from the temporary, hopefully permanent, but for the time being, temporary largesse of the local liquor board. And that only allows us to sell booze of any kind in the city limits. And people just want to make sure that wine classes continue.

Right? Abso-fucking-lutely. Abso-fucking-lutely. Wine class, always free. Always Sunday. You know, it keeps on trucking. It will be orange wine next week. I just actually might do it from the window at Tail Up Goat as opposed to my luxurious basement. My very patient wife will get her house back on Sunday. And, you know, cheers to her as well. All right. All right. Have you ever had Pompomousse rosé? Somebody wants to know. Pompomousse ro- so Pompomousse just means ... No, I know. So it's got some grapefruit flavoring to it? Oh, yeah. Yeah, Pompomousse means grapefruit in French. I've not. I can't say that I have. I imagine it would be good. You know, a lot of rosés just kind of taste like grapefruit to begin with. I'm, I'm huge fan of grapefruit. Excited.

I can't get past the Sutter Home recipe selections. I promise, you know, to craft several of those, or maybe not several. I'm going to set the bar low. I'll craft something. I'll make one of those dishes. I'll pick a favorite and I'll throw it on the ground for you all, but I'm really excited by the creative suggestions, because I know we have a hugely knowledgeable, you know, commentariat, and, you know, it's an ocean. It's a world, a brave new world of Sutter Home cooking possibilities here. Oh my gosh, there's another really good one. Reduce it and add to whipped cream and mix with strawberries for shortcake. Wow, wow. I want to know. I feel like you all, you all deserve some kind of, you know, kickback from Sutter Home.

Maybe we can, maybe we should, like, work out some, like, tail-up goat Sutter Home, you know, cross-promotion. Like, we don't, we don't, we don't recommend drinking it, but we do love to cook with it. Sutter Home. There you go. There you go. The coffee writes itself. All right, what else you got? Um, I so I, I can't really see the wine that you're drinking. Is it aged? Is it aged in stainless steel, or is it oak-aged? Do you know? Um, I think it's, I think it's totally stainless. Um, uh, so the notion of oak on, um, rosé, um, is an interesting one. So, you know, rosé is kind of, like, uh, delicate and pretty. So, you know, the mere thought of throwing, um, you know, something as, uh, powerful, um, for the sake of the, the set of flavors it transmits as, as oak, um, at the wine can, can, you know, uh, feel counterintuitive, but there are oak-aged, uh, rosés.

There are rosés that benefit from, uh, oak influence. Um, I don't believe this is one. Um, uh, there are some others, you know, the Paulette's, Paulette rosés, or there are a lot of, uh, rosados in, in Rioja that see, that see oak. So, uh, it, it exists. Um, and then, uh, very often, um, um, more kind of, like, uh, lovably old-fashioned winemakers will, um, use some, uh, neutral oak, uh, for the sake of their rosés. And, and that actually, for a wine that can be very acid-driven, kind of tends to soften, um, some of that. You know, harsher acidity. Uh, so that, that is a, a very useful, uh, winemaking technique often, uh, for the sake of rosé. Um, I guess let, let's tie it back into last week's class about local wines.

Um, you've got a couple of folks drinking local, um, one person in particular drinking the Noiré, uh, rosé from Kersalville, um, which I'm actually not familiar with. Um, what's your take on local rosés? Uh, so, Noiré is basically a local wine. Uh, it's a local wine. Uh, it's a local wine. Oh, that's interesting. I imagine that's a hybrid, um, so, uh, we're getting into a non-Venifera territory, for, uh, those of you playing at home, um, uh, Venifera, the, the wine grape, um, it's built into the name, um, comes from the old world. Um, there are a universe of grapes, uh, uh, La Brusca being the most famous one, which is the, um, uh, well, Concord, uh, is a, a, a varietal thereof, um, it goes into Minashevitz.

Um, they're called you know hybrids or American grape species and they tend to produce wines that are grapey, so you know, like grape artificial flavor comes from American grapes, it doesn't come from Vinifera grapes. Um, and so you get this whole set of flavors that often called boxy, um, because of the occasional resemblance to the musky clans of certain, you know, um, uh, you know species, but at any rate, um, they can be like juicy and um, fruity and fun. Um, rosé is a fun wine to play around with for a new winery, um, it's also more forgiving wine, um, for a new winery, uh, because, uh, you can harvest earlier, uh, then you would have to for a comparable, um, denser, inkier, uh, red wine, uh, you don't have to get you know quite as much, um, you know development of ripeness on the grapes, uh, to make something that's worth drinking, so um, it's it's a useful wine, you know, often, um, it's an unremarkable wine for the sake of new wineries just because it ends up being the dumping ground for fruit that they don't know what to do with otherwise um but uh in the hands of you know um you know more forward-thinking creative winemakers you know can be absolutely uh delicious um you know some of my favorite local rosés have been uh so we had ben jordan on the program yesterday he makes um some wines that are more like this um under a kind of uh side project label called light well survey i think those are really successful fun different um rosés you know for me you know especially as a local winery i find myself wanting to answer the question like you know what am i adding to the market am i just throwing out something that you know We can sell in a tasting room, that's great, you know, that's a great idea. I think it's a great there's value to that for for a winery but you know if you're going to make, you know, if you're really going to kind of swing for the fences and try to make your name on something, you know, I think it's better to try to turn out something that the market, you know, doesn't already have.

I don't know if I answered the question; the brief answer is no, I haven't had that wine but uh I hope it's delicious yeah um great uh do you have any opinion on the Early Mountain Rosé? I haven't had it, I feel bad I'm sure it's good uh yeah I haven't had it; they um I imagine It's Merlot, heavy um uh I don't know, 65% Merlot, yeah nailed it um I don't know, me Daniel told me okay um I don't, I don't always love what Merlot does in Rosé, you know I i kind of like out of my Merlot I just want Merlot to lean into Merlot if that makes sense I want it

to be like overripe and opulent and just like massive I don't want it to be like you know zippy and restrained um you know, that said I i like everything Ben does at Early Mountain so I have no doubt that it's a a good wine um you know but it's like anything in life, the gap between um you know, it's just kind of like mediocre and good, you know it is relatively sudden The gap between you know good and truly special is way bigger, you know that's that's a bigger hurdle, um, you know. In line as in life, all right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring it home with one last question which is what are your favorite rosés to drink anywhere and favorite grapes for rosé.

Um, so the aforementioned Sonoma, um, actually uh Tiburon, so one of my favorite uh, and I'll make sure um, I sent out a recap tomorrow with some of my favorite rosés, um, so I'm gonna bring it home with one of my favorite rosés because I do love rosé. One of my favorite rosés in the world comes from another Provençal producer called uh Clos Cibon, um, Clos Cibon. Makes a really unique wine under uh, floor, um, so uh, for those um of you unfamiliar with 'floor', 'floor' means a flower in Spanish, but refers to a layer of uh yeast that can develop on the surface of wine, um, when you leave a headspace in a cask or or in a tank, uh, more likely in a cask.

Um, and I know you're thinking yeah, of course, the nerdy Psalm likes you know, bacterial yeasty wine, but um, it it creates this like wonderful oxidized sherry-like quality um, for the sake of the wine. Um, it's also a wine that they hold back a year, you know, a lot of these wines they're so zippy they're so bright, that um, I find they they are more delicious once They've had a year to to settle down, and they're more delicious now, you know. They're just like, all over the place, um, you know? At first, it's like, actually there's a time in um the buying calendar for psalms, um, at the like, it's like the very, it's like ramp season, so the very beginning of spring which is like the worst part of spring because it just starts to get nice and you start to think, oh all this amazing produce is going to become available but nothing's available yet because nothing is any time to like, you know, come up yet.

And so you just eat, um, a lot of it. And then you're like, oh my god, I'm so hungry, I'm like all Of these ramps, and so, like ramp season in the wine world is like last vintage rosé season. So it's all of these um, you know reps that you know come around the restaurants, and they have last year's rosé, um, and they're trying to get rid of it because everybody wants to push out the current vintage of rosé, but I love last year's rosé; I would rather buy last year's rosé more often than not than this year's rosé, because this year's rosé is like all nervy and like you know hasn't...you know, probably bottle-shocked, and you know. But last year's rosé is like the perfect version of itself, and anyway close people do that does that for.

you um so i really like that one um uh i love bandol rosé in all of its iterations um uh name dropped etna rosado uh it's an amazing wine um uh calabretta is an amazing producer it's a just like really classic version of that wine that you know i have a sentimental attachment to um chair swallow is super fun um i don't it's weird i just like love hate thing with pinot rosé um uh i have a love hate thing with pinot in general pinot just has to be like good pinot sometimes it's not enough i only want like like special pinot and it's just like really it's hard it's hard to find that um but i love chinon rosé too so those are those are some Personal favorites, cool, awesome.

Um, thank you so much for joining us guys. There are a whole bunch of great people out there who are going to be doing their work and I know a lot of you are going to be doing your work too, so that's going to be a lot of fun. Um, we've got 182 of you still in the mix; we love you all. We're hugely excited um to continue teaching class but uh to do it um properly socially distanced uh back in our brick and mortar uh shop. We're thrilled to connect with you um online through the magic of our web store um which Sarah and I are still setting up uh as we speak uh, so um if you do uh encounter um any coding errors, please uh be countable and i'll see you in the next one bye bye time be patient and let us know um at any rate uh we um are honored to have you guys in the mix happy mother's day uh to you all we love you.