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Meet the Rosés | Gazela Rosé

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Gazela Rosé wine from Portugal

Our last stop on the rosé-glasses tour is Portugal, with the surprising Gazela Rosé.

Surprising for a couple of reasons, in fact. First, when I opened the bottle there was a hint of effervescence, something I was (obviously) not expecting but not something I minded either. The next, immediate, thing I noticed was that the scent of the wine was very fruity and sweet–I hadn’t even poured it yet and I could tell.

Or could I?

The nose of this rosé is deceptive, though. In a spectacular bait-and-switch, as my nose was sending ‘get ready for something sweet’ signals to my mouth, my taste buds were going what the hell?! Because this is not a sweet wine. It’s a touch dry and very crisp. They weren’t kidding with this brief description on their bottle:

Gazela Rosé is a refreshing, young and floral light wine.

No kidding! If by refreshing you mean it’ll wake you up from any after-work stupor you may have been flumping your way through.

Please don’t misunderstand me, though–even though I was shocked by the flavor of the wine, once the initial confusion subsides what you have is on par with a pink Champagne. I see this going very well with fruit or at a cocktail party, it would mix wonderfully with purees for some sparkling cocktails, or refresh you in the waning heat of summer. (Like summer every really ends here in Florida. Well, for more than a couple of weeks.)

In fact, I just splashed some together with chilled cranberry juice and the two together are very nice.

Again, this was another Cost Plus/World Market find, so most likely at or under $10 a bottle and definitely party-stock worthy.

Next week we’re back to mixing and shaking, folks–are you ready?

~Cheers!

Meet the Rosés | Volére Rosé

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So we’re kicking off our Rosé reviews with something I never thought I’d utter on this blog:

a box wine

Wait! Before you go, here me out?

Many of us who love wine, even those of us who love wine on an “unsophisticated” level, love the process that goes with the wine. The foil cover, the corkscrew, the cork. Letting a red wine breathe. Saving the labels and corks. It’s an experience even before you get to the swirling, sniffing, and swishing.

First they started with the corks. Some went synthetic, some went screw-top. As “cheap” as those screw-tops may feel–and they do represent a cost-savings for the bottlers and, therefore, us–they drastically reduce the possibility that this great bottle of wine you opened will taste “corked.” They also eliminate the need for storing on their side (for the same reason, no cork to keep from drying out).

I get it. I don’t have to love it, but I get it.

Then it was the boxes. Ditching the heavy glass bottles makes a lot of sense in some ways (no breakage, easier to stack and store, etc.) but, to me, it just removed all ceremony from the drinking of wine, and I love the ceremony as much as the flavors.

And I’ve resisted, lo these many years.

But I’m a sucker for good packaging.

So when I received the note about Volére’s new Wine-in-Purse collection last month, and they had a rosé available, I just had to request a sample.

And it’s darling, just like I thought it would be!

Volere Rose Wine in Purse, with poured glass of wine

Inside this cute little purse-shaped box–complete with cord handle for easy carrying–is 1.5 L of wine (that’s 2 regular bottles, folks), kept in an air-tight pouch (aka a bladder, but that’s not the most appetizing word choice, right?) with a convenient pour spout. Because the pouch deflates as you empty it, no air comes into contact with the wine still inside, meaning that leftovers keep far longer than in your average recapped or recorked bottle. Up to 5 weeks, according to the packaging!

But How Does It Taste?

When I swirled my first glass of it, I was reminded of strawberry wine back home in Louisiana. No surprise, then, that the bottlers describe it like so:

An intense bouquet of wild strawberry, raspberry and rose petals mingle with complex flavors of fresh red berries on the palate.

It has the crispness of a not-too-dry white wine with a little bit of berry from the red. I get floral notes but they don’t overpower, and it’s a little sweet without being cloying. And the color is so deep, it’s more of a salmon than just a pink wine.

Volére suggests their Rosé would go well with “appetizers, white meats, grilled vegetables and fresh seafood” or just something to sip before dinner. I think the packaging would make it stand out for any sort of gift-giving, tucked into a gift basket or presented to your hostess as is. And you know I’ve got weddings on the brain, so immediately I jump to this as a gift for bridesmaids or thank-you gifts to your vendors. And at $14.99 each (remember, that’s 2 bottles worth) it will stretch your gift budget far!

I admit, I was wooed by the packaging, but I’m not sorry I tried this wine and might even be willing to give some of those other box bundles a try.

Maybe.

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Volére Premium Italian Rosé Wine is produced by Cantina di Saove and imported MW Imports out of Brookln, NY. I was provided a wine-in-purse container of Rosé to try for purposes of review. All opinions are my own.

Meet the Wines: What IS Rosé

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We’ve done the reds, we’ve done the whites, now it’s time to tread the middle and meet the Rosés.

Rosés (Spanish: rosado, Italian: rosato, N.America: sometimes blush) are, generally speaking, a wine with more of a white wine profile from traditionally red wine grapes. And Rosé can be produced in three ways–two of which I knew about.

  • Skin Contact starts out like regular red wine, with the grape skins hanging out with the juice, but instead of co-macerating for the long haul, the skins are pulled out after only a few days, leaving the wine on the pink end of the spectrum but well before the tannins of red wine can develop.
  • Blending is just what it sounds like: you take the white, you take the red, you take them both and then you have? No, not the facts of life, the truth of Rosé. Only, well, this isn’t the usual way of doing things. It actually seems to be frowned upon except in Champagne, France, but even there the 3rd method is more popular.
  • Saignée (no, don’t ask me how to say it, either), is similar to Skin Contact but instead of draining the skins out to produce a light-colored wine, some of the early wine is drained off to concentrate the remaining red wine, and then the juice that was taken out gets fermented on its own.

And if you leave the skins in white wine you can actually end up with Orange wine, still considered, in the grand scheme of things, a Rosé.

Over the next 4 weeks I’m going to be sharing 4 random Rosés and, yes, I’ll even sample my least favorite wine ever: White Zinfandel (only I’m hoping the wine guys can steer me to a decent one).

The things I do for this blog 😉