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03/10/2000 Archived Entry: "More Wine Buys"

The musical line “Drink to me only with thine eyes …” flashed through my mind when I saw the bottle of Swanson Rosato 1998, a rose wine made from the Italian Sangiovese (Sahn-joe-vay-zay) grape in Napa Valley, California. It’s a strikingly strawberry colored wine packaged in clear glass so you can see it in it’s full red glory. If you enjoy the color of wine almost as much as its flavor and beneficial effects to your mood and health -- as well you should -- you will love this one.

Swanson Rosato also follows through with a strawberry-like bouquet with hints of spice. Belying the color and up-front sensations, however, it has a sophisticated earthy quality and is refreshingly crisp and absolutely dry without being austere.

At $11.99 a bottle, it’s going to be one of my main summer wines – I’m going to buy a case -- because it is so pretty to drink just like this, and will go so well with summer’s salads and vegetable dishes, particularly when then they are paired with chicken and seafood. The wine has both the acidity to stand up to the former and the body to balance the later.

The wine is estate bottled by Swanson Vineyards in Rutherford, California and is 13.5 percent alcohol.


Last week’s Wine Buy, which I failed to post on The Food Maven, was Hedge’s 1998 Columbia Valley red, a blend of 54 percent Merlot and 46 percent Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s made in Washington state, which, with its cooler than California climate, manages to produce wines that have, to my mind and palate, more European finesse than the wines of its neighbor to the south.

Hedge’s Columbia Valley has a real Bordeaux quality, which is to say a complexity of berry aromas and flavors, mixed with spice, and vanilla, and leather. Still, it has the fruitiness and rich mouth feel we associate with New World wines and not nearly the tannin of a big Bordeaux. It’s lack of tannin, which makes it so drinkable so young, can, in part, be attributed to its large percentage of Merlot and that grape’s famously soft, velvety quality. It’s this softness that these days makes Merlot so very, very popular as a single-variety wine. Here the Cabernet gives it some backbone and complexity. They are, indeed, the main grape varieties of Bordeaux.

This is not to say that you can’t put this lovely red wine away for a few years. I think it will age gracefully and well for a time. I finished off my bottle nearly a week after it was opened, by which time most red wines in this price category would have turned flat and boring. Hedge’s still tasted young and lively, just a bit softer.

If the Swanson Rosato is going to be my house rose this summer, the Hedge’s Columbia Valley is going to be one of my main grilled meat wines. It’s a steal at about $10.