Wine Review: 2014 California Rose’, Menage A Trois

Way back in the beginning of all this wine business, I bought a bottle of really bad Rose’, then I tried a few more at various local wineries and didn’t like them either so naturally I assumed that all Rose’ was terrible.

As it turns out, not all Rose’ is terrible.

Just some of it.

Rose’ is wildly popular right now. Its the feel-good wine of the summer. I can’t peruse my wine feed on Twitter and not see dozens of posts featuring frosty glasses of alluring pink wine.

Am I missing something?

I started to wonder if all these folks had awful taste in wine or if I had just experienced a bit of bad luck. Suspecting that the latter was the truth, I decided to give Rose’ one more try.

If there’s one winemaker who can be relied upon to get something right, it’s Menage A Trois. I have yet to try a wine from them that wasn’t delicious so off to my local state regulated liquor store I went.

Here’s what I learned:

Rose’ should be chilled but not ice cold. It’s not beer or soda and ice cold is too cold, bringing out the less pleasant tart and bitter notes. 60-70 degrees (Fahrenheit, obviously) is ideal. At this temperature, Menage A Trois Rose is smooth like buttah, lightly sweet and just barely tart. Most importantly, it’s smooth. Life is too short to choke down wine that punches you in the throat.

I paired it with chicken tiki Masala, which was excellent, but I also think it would go nicely with a mandarin and strawberry spinach salad topped with vinaigrette dressing and Gorgonzola cheese.

Menage A Trois creates their Rose’ blend from Merlot, Syrah, and Gewurztraminer.

The label describes it as, “raspberries, strawberries, lychee nuts, and flowers.” I have no idea what lychee nuts taste like and have yet to make a habit of eating flowers but this Rose is quite delectable nonetheless. It’s also 13.5% alcohol so there is nothing weak or foo-foo about it.

Menage A Trois Rose’ is the grown up, feel good, beverage of summer 🙂