Nothing Says Summer like Wine Spritzers!

Of rose wine. Now, all you wine connoisseurs out there will be snubbing your noses and me and cringing, but shun it all you want. Rose wine is refreshing and delicious, though only socially acceptable to drink for a few weeks during June and July. Past that you are just a low class, uneducated white zinfandel drinker. You might as well do a bag stand from a box of Franzia while you're at it.

I have always had a soft spot for the pink wines, often called blush wines because of their lovely hues ranging from a slight cheek flush to bordering on the deep red of its more socially acceptable sisters. It all started with a little boxed wine habit that my roommate and I developed in college. Yet since then, my tastes have evolved. I still enjoy the rose, but in a more mature form. And it turns out that white zinfandel isn't even a real rose, but merely a "bleed" red zinfandel. Real rose wines are made by a careful process involving removal of the grape skins just at the right moment before they can darken the tint to a red.

Recently I had a Malbec Rose, which knocked my socks off, although I can say that about most Spanish wines, especially those from the Rioja region. Right now I am sipping a rose from Provence, and it's not half bad. Slightly sweet, and rolling off the tongue like a seltzer bubble popping off the top of my spritzer. It's these ripened rose picks that are helping the category to lose it's social prohibition, and bring one of my favorite guilty pleasures back into the social norm. Cheers to that!