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05/31/2001 Archived Entry: "Wine Buy: Mas de Gourgonnier 2000"

Rosé wines – pink wines -- like sweet wines, didn’t used to be considered worthy of sophisticated drinkers. It’s true, many rosés are either acid-edged, thin-bodied cousins of red wine, or cloying off-dry wines with a candy character. Many French rosés are examples of the former. White zinfandel, which is truly a pink wine, is a good example of the later.

Note how the California marketers called it “white” zinfandel. The zinfandel grape is a red grape that, at its best, makes gutsy, spicy, robust red wines full of character and panache. When it became an unfashionable red and the growers needed to dispose of their large plantings, the winemakers came up with the idea of turning the grape into a pink wine. So many Americans had a bad impression of pink wine, however, that they called it “white.”

Mas de Gourgonnier Rose, 2000 from Les Baux de Provence, in the south of France, where many good rosés are made, is one of the worthiest of rosés, however. It has a “full-blown mouthfeel,” as Food Talk sommelier Carol Berman put it. And it is loaded with berry flavors, with hints of cherry. “This dry rosé delivers!” she enthuses.

It is a blend of three red grapes -- Syrah, Grenache and Cinsault. It is a gorgeous salmon-pink. As with all roses, the color comes from the grape skins. When the grapes are crushed, the juice is left in contact with the skins just long enough to give the wine a blush of color. If the skins are left to ferment with the juice (“must,” in wine lingo), then the wine ends up being red, not just pink.

Carol thinks the Mas de Gourgonnier is great as an aperitif, but I much prefer it with food to drinking it without food. It has a lot of acidity that needs tempering. If you serve it before a meal, make sure you have some olives, almonds or other nuts – a snack with a good fat content – to tame the wine. An olive and caper tapende or anchoiade (anchovy paste) on crackers or garlic-rubbed toast would be perfect, and very Provençal. (There’s an old saying: “Things that grow together go together.”)

The wine should also be excellent with a hearty fish stew, as in bouillabaisse, the fish stew of Provence.

Because the wine should be drunk as young as possible, buy only the 2000 vintage, nothing older, and drink it this summer. The average retail price is $11.99