It's good to make reasonable goals or, failing that, to make unreasonable goals and be ready to adjust them often. That's all a way of saying that no, that big box of rosé I was planning to have for summer never made it to the summer solstice. But! When I adjusted my goal, hoping only to make the rosé last until June, I achieved my goal and now I feel like a winner. However... I am a winner with no house wine now. So here are three wines that have filled the hole in my heart and my refrigerator.

Skouras White Peloponnese, Greece 750ml $10.95
This wine is the Mediterranean in a bottle (without the smarmy guys and all the tourists). It's has really nice fruit upfront and, especially on the nose, I get lots of peach and some white flower notes. I really love it when this wine gets on my palate, though. That's when the wonderful, creamy texture shows up, along with some nice, light spice. It's great to have a wine that's full of character but really easy going a the same time.

Chateau Benoit Müller Thurgau Oregon, USA 750ml $12.95
Müller Thurgau is one of my favorite grapes. It has a lot of its own character but also responds well to the wine-making techniques of different regions. In northern Italy, wines made from Müller Thurgau tend to be crisp and clean and wonderfully minerally. In Oregon, they are often made with a little (or too often, a lot of) sweetness. Elegant floral notes combine with some tropical notes and that touch of sweetness for a graceful, balanced wine. (Read more about Müller Thurgau at Craig Camp's blog)

Magdala Rosé Provence, France 3000ml $28.95
This is almost too easy a replacement. Sure it looks like wine that you'd get from a pharmacy, but that should only make you confident that these winemakers put more money into their wine than into their packaging. This little better-for-the-Earth box has four bottle's worth of light, very easy to drink and very tasty rosé inside. It's perfect for a weekend with friends or, for that matter, a weekend alone. I'm thinking doctors should start prescribing this rather than pills. (Kidding! Sort of.)

Labels: american, french, greek, rose, whites

One of the nice things about wine besides, you know, tasting good and getting you drunk, is that it inspires a lot of wine accessories. Here's some cool stuff I've found lately, in case that government rebate check is burning a hole in your pocket or if, like me, you need gifts for all 250 of your friends that are getting married this summer.

Straight from Bordeaux comes the craziest decanter I've ever seen. I love that it looks sort of biological and that the artist's blog is called the-strange-decanter. Feel free to pick one of these up for me, they're only 5000 euros plus shipping... I'll buy the wine!

Labels: accessories, wine culture

Lately I have felt inundated with information about the environment; my carbon footprint, being green, salmonella laden tomatoes etc....Sometimes it all gets to be too much, and when you find yourself searching for the recycling number on the side of all of a plastic bottle you know there must be an easier way to do this. So it was with great joy that I read this and I was reminded that occasionally our instincts are correct. Which got me thinking, if drinking wine from France is already a good idea then drinking it out of a box from France must be an even better idea. After all you can pack more square items in than round items, boxes are lighter, take less fuel to produce, and contain more wine. So what this means is that if I want to be truly "green" I should drink all of my wine from cute little cardboard boxes.

At the beginning of May, I brought home my 10 liter box of Domaine Roger Perrin rosé and introduced it to its new home on the top shelf of my refrigerator. Then I had a housewarming party for it and drank two bottle's worth of it. It's kind of a rite of summer to have more than a case's worth of Rhone rosé available, crisp and cold, ready for drinking anytime. So when two weeks had passed and I was having to tilt the box to fill my wine glass, I got a little concerned. What if the ultimate summer treat never even made it to summer, much less June? I don't know if it'll still be around another three weeks, but I've tried to diversify my drinking a little more as part of my Rosé Conservation Program.

When my girlfriend and I got back from a long bike ride and needed a wine to drink on the fire escape, rather than dipping into the rosé reserve, I cracked open a bottle of Muralhas de Monção Vinho Verde. Vinho verde is another one of those wines that go so well with spring and summer because it is light and crisp and usually slightly sparkling (and cheap!). Much of the vinho verde from the Monção subregion, where this one is from, has a higher amount of alvarinho in the mix, is typically a little higher in alcohol and has more body. (I've talked about my love of alvarinho (known in Spain as albariño) before. But because prices for European wines have been jumping higher, it has been hard to find a reasonably-priced bottle to carry in the store for some time.) I had heard reports that other people had really enjoyed this wine, but my palate had been concerned exclusively with rosé for weeks and I wondered if I'd be interested in anything else.

I stuck my allergy-addled nose into the glass and instantly picked out those great alvarinho notes that I enjoy: beautiful creamy jasmine notes and a little almond nuttiness. I didn't expect those notes to be so present, so I couldn't wait to get the wine on my palate. The creamy texture of the alvarinho combined with that vinho verde bubbliness is exquisite. It is both very refreshing and very satisfying at the same time. I love my rosé, don't get me wrong. But for this moment, watching the clouds get colored by the sunset, feeling a spring breeze and sipping this wine, I realized that this vinho verde was exactly what I wanted right then. At only $11.95, it's possible that my rosé could last a while longer... maybe.

This vinho verde would go really well with shellfish and other seafood dishes and salads. For a more typical style of vinho verde, you could also try the C. Mendes Vinho Verde, which is only $7.95.

Muralhas de Monção Vinho Verde, Portugal | $11.95
C. Mendes Vinho Verde, Portugal | $7.95
Domaine Roger Perrin Rosé, France | $91.95

Labels: albarino, portugal, rose, whites