October is a big month for indulging, with not one, but two separate holidays that revolve around eating and drinking with family and friends.
Halloween is still a week or so away, but I am still feeling the effects of Thanksgiving, with a turkey coma that lasted the entire next day.
Rather than toiling in the kitchen over a hot stove all day, my Thanksgiving duties are the beverage pairings. The traditional wisdom is to pair Chardonnay with turkey, but I like to throw caution to the wind and imbibe dangerously.
I feel that I can be honest with you, the faithful reader, and let you in on a dirty little Thanksgiving secret. Chardonnay and turkey go well together because they are both fairly bland and unassuming. A more flavourful wine would overpower the turkey, while a more flavourful meal would make a light Chardonnay seem limp and washed out.
Furthermore, it is all well and good to pair a specific wine with the turkey, but what about everything else on the table? The stuffing is generally flavoured with a melange of spices and seasonings, while the sharp flavours of the cranberry sauce make a light white wine seem thin and reedy.
This year, I threw caution to the wind and decided to forego the Chardonnay entirely, replacing it with a smoky Rosé.
For those unfamiliar with just how wine gets its colour, it is all about the skin contact. All grape juice is clear in colour, so red wines are red because the squeezed juice is soaked with the grape skins for several days, which transfers the colour from the skins to the juice.
Rosé wines are made from juice pressed from red grapes, which is then allowed to remain in contact with the skins for several hours, just long enough to impart a pale pink tone to the juice.
The skins are then removed from the pressed juice, and the fermentation process then begins like any other wine. Since most of the tannins are in the grape skins, the brief contact means that rosé wines are not very tannic.
Rosé wines have come a long way since the halcyon days of my towheaded youth. Rosé had a bad reputation in the latter years of past century, overly sweet and tasting somewhat like a strawberry spritzer wine cooler.
Fortunately, Rosé has come into its own over the past few decades, as winemakers pay more attention to this once-maligned style.
The Provence region of France is the ancestral home of Rosé wines, dating back to the days of the Roman Empire, and remains the world leader in Rosé production to this very day. It all began in the 2nd century, when the winemakers of the day would press and process the grapes very quickly, leaving the red skins in contact for only a few days, resulting in what we now refer to as Rosé. The wine became very popular, and was shipped to all corners of the Roman Empire.
While we are far removed from the toga-wearing days of the Roman Empire, modern winemakers in Canada also produce Rosé wines, most of which are from the Okanagan region of BC.
My favourite Rosé wine from BC is the Haywire Gamay Rosé, which you may have already guessed is made from the Gamay Noir grape, which is sometimes referred to as the less-famous little brother of Pinot Noir.
Rosé wines can be made from any red grape varietal, with different countries having their preferred varietals. France tends to favour the Bordeaux varietals, while Spanish Rosé tends to come from Tempranillo or Garnacha, and Italy preferring their own native Sangiovese varietal.
Here in Canada, most of our Rosé is made from French grape varietals, mostly Merlot, Cab Franc, and Pinot Noir.
The flavour profile of a Rosé is generally lighter-bodied than a red wine made from the same grape, as the red wines have much more tannin due to the extended skin contact.
The overly sweet Rosé wines of yesteryear are now just an unpleasant memory, with modern winemakers producing Rosé with a complex bouquet, fermented at cool temperatures for extended periods for a nice dry finish, and lightly finished in oak for a more complex mouthfeel and added toasty aromatics. Give one a try today, either by itself or paired with turkey and all the fixings.
