By Patrick Ogle

Beurer Wurttemberg Rose Trocken 2015 is a rosé that should find its place onto your summer table (if you can find a bottle). It is a blend of trollinger, portugieser, zweigelt and spatburgunder (aka pinot noir).

Trollinger (also called schiava grosso) makes a red wine that is so light in color that it almost looks like a rose. This rose is almost as dark in color as many trollinger reds. None of the other grapes are known for making particularly heavy wines.

The smell is like a grape jolly rancher--quite grapey. It is bright, has refreshing acidity and it is way up on the list of what you want to be drinking on a hot day. It is a rose that flirts with and acknowledges its inner redness but since the  wine is mostly  trollinger? This "redness" isn't too...well...too red.

There is a lot of dissolved CO2 here but it isn't sparkling but, even so, that gas leaves you with a wine that is quite lively. There is a slight vinegar taste here--acetic acid lurking well beneath the surface which adds a wee little bit of what you might, MIGHT call complexity to the wine. But it is hard to call this complex. It is an ultimately drinkable summertime wine that is interesting without being off-putting.

by Patrick Ogle

Robert Sinskey Vin Gris of pinot noir was a wine I discovered accidentally. An old boss decided to open a bottle so everyone could try it. As soon as I took a sip I said "@#$% you!" because I knew I was buying a bottle.

This light, elegant rose pinot noir has something just short of effervescence, a crispness from dissolved CO2. It definitely calls to mind strawberries and finishes with a hint  of acidity. It is a nice rose for a hot day--a commonly statement about light crisp roses. Remember that when someone says something has a fruit flavor they are not necessarily referring to sweetness but other parts of the fruit's flavor. This wine is dry as a bone.

I don't always think of what food to have with a wine but here I couldn't help thinking of having this with some light fair--cheese (nothing to stinky) and dried fruits. I wouldn't want to fruit to be too sweet or too acidic. This is a wine to serve cold. 

"Is this sweet?" is a common question aimed at a bottle of rose. Perhaps this is because the wine is pink and pretty and just SEEMS like it should be sweet.  Perhaps they are recalling days of yore when white zinfandel ruled the grocery store shelves. Sweet roses, however, seem to have gone out of fashion these days; they are rare birds.

This is a Carneros pinot noir and if you can find a bad wine from there I will eat my hat.

$24-28

by Patrick Ogle

Paul Anheuser's Blanc de Noir 2014 is a white pinot noir from Germany. The wine is an unusual and affordable  white that may not appeal to everyone but certainly has its charms and its place.

When you pour this wine into the glass the first thing you notice is its lightness of color. Take a whiff of it and you may, incongruously, think of...cheese. Yes it has a strangely cheesy nose and this was not just my strange olfactory sense others noted the scent too. This sensation doesn’t translate into the taste of the wine.

The wine is light with a hint of sweetness, bit of honey when you hold the wine in your mouth.  If you have to pick a fruit to hang on this wine you might come up with cherry—but there is nothing of the tartness of many types of cherry.  You might, at first taste, also sense plum. But neither the plum nor the cherry is what you would really call red or black fruit here—imagine those cherry and plums that are less pigmented. Some might try this and think “It is sweeter than that?” but that would be the fruit. There is sugar here but the fruitiness is what amplifies that.

Pinot noir is usually a red wine obviously but you could make (almost) any grape into a white wine. Two of the main grapes used in making Champagne pinot noir and pinot meunier are red grapes. What gives the vast majority of red wines color is contact with red skins. When making a white wine with red grapes the juice is simply not left in contact with the skins. You will frequently find rose wines made from grapes that usually produce red wines (cabernet franc, blaufrankisch, zweigelt, pinot noir, mourvedre etc.).

I’ve read before that white pinots are big bodied golden colored wine.  Perhaps they are but this one, while having some complexity isn’t; it is light in color and light to MAYBE medium in body. Hard to say that a wine that is less than 12 percent alcohol is even medium bodied but there is a sort of viscous sensation with this wine.

It is, all in all, an interesting wine for a hot day. It was not love at first sip but later, with some spicy food, the wine really came into its own. Try it with a dinner with some heat.

As a side note there are red grapes that produce red juice without skin contact. These are called teinturiers. They are rare and not, generally, highly regarded.

$14-16