2013 Las Rocas de San Alejando Rosé, Calatayud, Spain, $10
There’s a great commercial airing for 1800 Tequila wherein aging Goodfellas tough guy Ray Liotta silently mean mugs a pair of neatly dressed dudes drinking Manhattans at the end of the bar into regretting their drink choices. The message is clear: Tough guys drink the macho stuff, straight-up no less. It’s no mystery in American drinking culture that the image of what you drink is almost as important to some as what you’re actually drinking. Cowboys = whiskey, Bud Light & Marlboros. The marketing types love a formula and a lot of us buy right into it.
Imagine, then, the Sisyphean task of a winemaker getting us John Wayne drinking tough guys and gals to drink a pink tinged wine. Yup, I’m talking about the much misunderstood Rosé. In college, I had a roommate who went absolutely nuts over a Friday night bottle of Beringer White Zinfandel (which was strangely not white, but pink) and it took me a solid decade to get over the sticky-sweet gut bomb she loved so dearly. It wasn’t until I was enticed into a flight of Rose at a local restaurant that it hit me: Rosé is vibrant and reflective of what it’s made out of; indeed some are sweet, some bubbly and some a hybrid of the best of red wines with the easy drinkability of a white.
With this in mind I grabbed a bottle of Las Rocas de San Alejandro Rosé. With a warm spring growing ever more summer-like, I wanted something easy to drink in the backyard with a long-time friend who was passing through town. When I broke it out of the fridge, my buddy, a former Division I athlete had to rib me a little, “Dude, c’mon! What is this? Cotton candy?” I was getting the Ray Liotta treatment. I quickly reminded him of our trips to Spain and his love of Grenache, which the Las Rocas Rosé is mostly made out of. Watermelon and strawberry give way to a dry and astringent finish, and that was enough to win him over. “It’s sorta like a red, but easier, ya know?” With no one to indict him for drinking something unbecoming of a tough guy, he grabbed the bottle and poured deeply, letting what’s in the glass speak for itself. And if you’re not ready to do the same, the 1800 is just a few shelves over, Ray Liotta not included.
