(One Jeroboam equals four regular bottles of wine. (After ordering the combo four times in four days, I have to say he's right.)Īt Nikki Beach Saint Barth, a day club whose patrons include Beyonce, Mariah Carey, and Gwen Stefani, rosé is so popular that they sell it in 3-liter bottles called Jeroboams. Bright and crisp, there’s no better pairing for a plate of poolside, cornflake-crusted shrimp, the sommelier said. “Salad, fish, meat, cheese - there’s nothing that rosé does not go with.” One of Le Barthélemy's most ordered brands is Love by Léoube, a Côtes de Provence export with a logo that looks like it could've been written by hand. “We have rosé with everything,” one sommelier, who works at the luxury hotel Le Barthélemy, told me. In search of the best way to drink rosé, I went to the Provence of the tropics. The currency is the Euro, the language is French, and the wine is the color that streaks the sky at sunset. Barts, as it’s commonly known, is technically part of France. While much of the world’s most prized rosé is made in Provence, in the south of France, a closer-to-home hotspot is the Caribbean island Saint Barthélemy. “They didn’t want a heavy red wine in the summer heat.” Today, the traditional method of making it relies on “skin contact,” in which red grapes are crushed and the juice, which is naturally clear, remains in contact with the grapes’ skins for a short period of time, from a few hours to several days, to extract color and tannin from the skins before they’re removed. “They blended white and red wines together to make a rose-colored wine,” Hemer says. Rosé may seem like a recent phenomenon, but its history actually dates back to ancient Greeks and Romans. Lisa Vanderpump, the former Real Housewife of Beverly Hills, has become a de facto spokesperson for rosé. “We sold more Whispering Angel in the month of April than we did last August, which is traditionally the biggest month for rosé,” Hemer says. The pink wine picks up in popularity during the warmer months, and last spring alone, Americans spent $216 million on rosé, according to a NielsenIQ report. “Last year, rosé accounted for 2.5 million cases,” he tells Bustle. wine and spirits distributor, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits. In 2005, for example, a total of 27,000 cases of rosé were sold in the U.S., according to Eric Hemer, the director of wine education for the largest U.S. Stateside sales are reportedly increasing at 30% to 50% per year, dwarfing what was once a quirky little category. Truly, rosé is everywhere: at Whole Foods, your local wine bar, and in the fishbowl-sized glasses on reality TV. I found myself wondering: are we drinking rosé all wrong? That’s essentially what happened to me recently, after taking a swig from a glass of Whispering Angel that had lingered too long in the sun. As refreshing as a formerly cold towel that’s been unrolled, swabbed over someone else’s face, and thrown on the floor. When you come back to it, 15, 20, 35 minutes later, what you thought would be a bracing, bright splash of sunshine in your mouth has become … flat. You pour some into a plastic cup, get distracted by a plate of food, and promptly forget about your glass. There’s a bottle of pink wine in an ice bucket. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: You’re at a party.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |