What’s wrong with Rosé wines?
Now that the summer is here I like to enjoy a glass or two of rosé wine. Personally I like them when they’re not too meek and mild but with a bit more character. This summer I’ve been enjoying Tombu Rosé 2007 by Dominio DosTares. But no matter where I am the reaction when I pop open a bottle of rosé is quite often the same; there seems to be a notion that a man drinking rosé wine is a bit, well, suspicious. Usually my friends and family are very liberal-minded but when it comes to pink wine a lot of them seem to be stuck with values from a bygone era.
In all honesty, not all people around me are as dismissive of the stuff. One of my best friends, John, is quite a manly guy and he doesn’t frown upon rosé wine. I have been using this as proof; if a good ole boy from Madison, Indiana likes rosé it has to be OK for any man to drink it.
But even this trusty reference has now failed me. Yesterday, I was popping up a bottle of rosé that I have painstakingly carried with me from Spain up to the summer house in northern Sweden. I thought it would be the perfect drink before dinner, as we watched the sunset (that is one great thing with sundowners here up north; the sunset lasts about 6 hours so there is plenty of time for going through a wast selection of different sundowners). As I poured wine in the glasses my mother-in-law came up with a snide remark involving rosé wine and blue-haired old ladies. My father-in-law chuckled, but of course helped himself to another glass of the wretched stuff. To counter this attack on my manhood I triumphantly brought up John as an example of a real man who enjoys his rosé wine.
My wife Anna then of course quickly backstabbed me with the question if I was referring to John, the man who holds his glass with his pinkie sticking out and who happens to own an electric lawn mower entirely made out of plastic…. I had to admit to that I was referring to that very same John. It obviously did not help to convince my in-laws that rosé wine is a drink also for men and women with hair on their chest.
Why is rosé wine so maligned? It doesn’t matter if it’s still wine or sparkling. Even one of the noblest of wines suffers the same stigma - pink champagne. Even though I often find pink champagne the most intriguing and full-bodied of champagnes it is invariably associated with words like “decadent”. Is it just so simple that wine of roughly the same colour as the walls of many 6-year old girls’ bedrooms is deemed incapable of being of high quality?
Fredrik