Dry rosé is more popular now than ever before here in America, and I say “It’s about time!” I don’t recall exactly when I fell in love with them, but I do know that even a few years ago, we didn’t sell very many of them. The bottles would collect dust, every once in a while we would sell one, and eventually I would break down and buy them because I was the only one I knew who actually enjoyed them.

   And then it happened! One day, the shelves were empty, just like that. We sourced more, and we sold more. For a period, it was difficult to keep the good ones in stock. Not only the sweetish rosé d’Anjou, but, more incredibly, the dry wines from California, southern France, and other parts of Europe. It couldn’t be the ‘new thing’--people who lived where these wines are made have enjoyed them for eons….I like to believe that people discovered the usefulness of the rosé at the table, especially here in Florida.

  Rosé is a special wine, matching with a wide variety of food types such as shrimp and fish, including some of the more difficult ones, like salty dishes and garlic infused ones like tapenade and aioli. Travel to the south of France and you might escape without feasting on Bouillabaisse, but you won’t be able get past the dozens of wonderful rosés, and I can’t imagine you would want to.

Many of these thirst quenching gems are made using saignee, where the red grapes are crushed and the juice is allowed to begin picking up pigments from the skins before a percentage of the pink juice is bled off and made into rosé. And, the resulting red wine becomes a little more, well, red…with more concentration and stuffing because of this bleed off. A wine win-win situation! One rule of thumb…buy them as fresh as you can, most are only designed to age until the next vintage rolls around.

I would be interested to hear of other dishes you are pairing with these delicious pink wines! My favorite is a bowl of garlicky tapenade and a cold rosé on the hottest day!

--Shayne Hebert, Wine Supervisor, Central Florida