A Perennial Favorite Returns: Broc Cellars' Cali Cool Rosé
Remember White Zinfandel? Sweet, pink, and boozy, and made in huge factories for grocery store shelves?
It seems like the ancient past, a relic from the 1980s. But we looked it up: Americans still drink $300 million of White Zinfandel per year! Yes, for some reason, large swathes of Americans are stuck in the 1980s.
We love the 1980s as much as anyone! New Order, Cheers, Mission Haut Brion 1989….but we don’t think it needs to be your reference point for pink wine.
California, fortunately, has a fresh-millennia answer to White Zinfandel: Love Rosé from Broc Cellars. It's a natural, dry and easy-drinking gem of a summer sipper.
How do you make a rosé for our times?
First, out go the chemicals. Then, out goes the sugar, and down goes the alcohol.
Instead of using high-yielding grapes from giant Central Valley vineyards, the fruit comes from old vines in cool, wind-swept sites along California’s northern coast.
It is made in a super small facility, where the workers use their own feet to trample the grapes – a far cry from the industrial complex that churns out Sutter Home’s White Zin (which accounts for about one-third of that $300 million).
Now, one thing that White Zinfandel did get right was Zinfandel: a wonderful grape that is practically indigenous to California.
But Broc goes one better, blending Zin with Valdiguié, the brilliant, again near-indigenous Californian grape that in the past was referred to as “Gamay.” He rounds out the blend with Trousseau, the Jura red grape that has only quite recently proven its terrific potential in the sunny state.
This is the pink wine of the present, and hopefully the future.
The flavors are friendly and finely balanced: citrus and cranberry notes with just a dash of raspberry are at the forefront, but the Zin’s natural structure provides some sneaky complexity and the Trousseau gives a jolt of sunny brightness.
Most importantly, it will quench your thirst! At just 11% alcohol (yet still fermented dry, using natural yeasts), this is a wine with crushability in mind.
Sip in a backyard this summer, with vegetables on the grill.
