No need to worry if you’ve put off planning a special evening with a special someone. A flute of pink sparkling wine is a celebration in a glass no matter whom you share it with, or when.
Roses and sparklers are two of the most food-friendly wine styles around: The former can pinch-hit as either whites or reds, while the latter’s crisp acidity and bubbles cleanse the palate. Marry the two, and the match creates the world’s single food-friendliest wine.
Within the realm of rose sparkling wines, you’ll find variations that run the gamut: from delicate to robust in color, body and flavor, and from dry to off-dry in sweetness. Here you can find a match for virtually any food. Pink sparklers can be as great with “surf,” including clams, mussels, oysters, squid, crab, lobster, salmon and tuna, as they are with “turf,” such as rare filet mignon, lamb or duck. They also can stand up to creamy mushroom dishes and other rich foods, fried or salty starters and even spicy foods, including chili-laden dishes from Mexican, Hunan, Indian, Sichuan and Thai cuisines.
Over the past few weeks, we sipped our way through dozens of bottles of pink sparkling wines made in the traditional method to bring you the best of the bunch. Because readers often seek a wine in a particular price range, we’ve listed them in increasing order of price.
From among our three California sparkling rose recommendations, Karen netted her pick of the week: The N.V. Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Brut Rose Sparkling Wine ($27) is the effort of an offshoot of Champagne’s Louis Roederer, maker of famed Cristal Champagne. The nose is strawberry cheesecake: ripe, round strawberries with hints of cream cheese, vanilla and graham cracker crust. With its lush body, constant stream of tiny bubbles and long, creamy finish, this is a sparkler with impressive finesse. We found it all the more impressive that it paired so well with food, especially sauteed salmon, which perfectly echoed its color.
Although our other two California choices hail from Sonoma’s Russian River Valley, they could hardly be more different. The N.V. J Brut Rose ($35) is a relative whisper of a pink sparkler, very delicate in color, body and flavor — so much so that we worried it would be overwhelmed by food. But we were pleasantly surprised to find that it, too, was an ideal complement to delicate sauteed salmon. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the 2003 Iron Horse Brut Rose ($50), from the Green Valley, is deep ruby-pink in color and equally big in flavor, body and even aroma. Although this rose overpowered the same salmon, it stood up beautifully to sliced rare filet mignon.
Those first three choices represented a somewhat narrow flavor band. The N.V. Champagne Taittinger Prestige Rose Brut ($60) is lighter-bodied, with bright, refreshing raspberry and strawberry flavors and streams of fine bubbles. Surprisingly, it paired beautifully with the salmon and the filet.
The 2002 Louis Roederer Vintage Rose Champagne Brut ($75) is drier and more delicate than Karen’s pick, its California cousin. It is an elegant sparkler with an abundance of fine bubbles and a rich, creamy finish that underscored the salmon’s silkiness.
Andrew’s pick, the N.V. Laurent-Perrier Cuvee Rose Brut Champagne ($80), is a splurge champagne for any occasion that calls for one. He loved its tart red-fruit notes — cherries, raspberries and strawberries — on the nose and palate. This was an extraordinary match with the salmon, both with and without a red-pepper sauce. Its distinctive round-bottomed bottle is modeled after those used in the late 17th century, and its salmon hue is the result of the saignee method, wherein the juice is left in contact with red grape skins, which bleed a pink tinge. (More commonly, a bit of red wine is simply added to the finished blend.)
With any one of these sparkling selections, you can surprise your date with an all-pink menu: paper-thin slices of smoked salmon, prosciutto or beef carpaccio, or even takeout salmon and tuna sushi. If your date isn’t really a date, you can raise a delicious toast to anything you like, such as friendship.
Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page are award-winning authors of “What to Drink with What You Eat.”
Thinking Pink
Look outside France’s Champagne region for the best values in pink sparkling wines. Spain makes its famed cava sparklers using the same traditional method of secondary bottle fermentation that is used to make Champagne. (In fact, cava — which is Catalan for “cellar” — was called “champan” until use of the term was nixed by the French.) Cava’s flavors tend to be a bit more on the earthy, savory side, and the wines are almost invariably great buys.
Our bargain recommendation this week is the N.V. Segura Viudas Brut Rose Cava ($11) from Spain. This bright-reddish-pink bubbly, aged in the bottle for one to two years, has coffeelike aromas. Its Old World earthiness and toastiness are well balanced by robust strawberry and raspberry flavors.
To enhance the flavor of rose bubbly even further, serve it very cold (about 45 degrees) and keep it on ice after opening.
The Washington Post
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
