Rosé Wine is on Fire

Living in Hawaii I tend to assume that whatever is popular right now was popular somewhere trendy on the mainland about 10 years ago. I am stoked that it seems that rosé aka blush wine has finally hit it’s stride out here. The days of cloyingly sweet White Zin are behind us and hello light/crisp/refreshing/floral rosé. This is a great development because few wines match our climate and our food in Hawaii as well as these do. I must admit that I am mostly a purist, greedily eying my allocations of posh Provence rosé  such as Domaine Tempier and Domaine Ott. Up until recently, not much else could get me excited in this category. I have been having my own paradigm shift. There are domestic rosé that are really good. And, I don’t mean good in that “oh this is good for a California rosé, I think I detect some acid” kind of way. I mean that I am experiencing rosé made in a truly thoughtful way that is starting to blow my mind. There are many examples, but one that recently stood out to me was a Pinot Noir rosé by a small winery called Red Car. In a blind tasting I would have said that this must be a Sancerre rosé, surely it can’t be from the New World. There are also wine makers from other regions in France and even California that are throwing there hats in the ring in Provence to get us new and interesting wines that are a fraction of the established brands. If you haven’t dabbled in this category yet, I feel that there may be a hidden pleasure waiting for you. Rosé is a great chance to get the refreshing qualities of a white wine with some more of the red fruit characteristics of a red.