It used to be tough for me to decide what to serve at a dinner party when I knew the group would be headed out afterwards, but I think I've come up with a great solution after a couple trial events. The best wine to serve at a pre-party or pre-evening out dinner is Pink. It is usually lighter in alcohol then red wine and doesn't leave you feeling sleepy, so you'll have plenty of tolerance and energy to continue your fabulous evening. It will also stand up to bigger foods than white wine, so you can still serve that rack of ribs, instead of being forced to work with chicken or fish (which it also pairs rather nicely with). This New Year's Eve, my husband and I are planning on having a small group over to dine with us, prior to opening our doors to a much larger audience for the turn of the year. I'm planning to serve my famous lemon confit ribs, and a little pink wine to go with it!
Pink wine has been dealt a bad rap. Some of it is deserved, and most of its not. Pink wines are very popular among the French, known there as Rose (pronounced Rose-ay). They were very popular in America too, in the 70s and 80s, and have since developed a reputation for being cheap and sweet. Back then they were deserving of that reputation, however today, you can find very delicious pink wines made in the U.S. as long as you keep one key thing in mind: don't buy anything called "white (insert grape name)". This means, no white merlot, white cabernet, or the ever popular white zinfandel. These wines are going to be the sappy, inexpensive wines you're probably not looking for.
White Zinfandel was first introduced by Sutter Home Winery in the early 1970s. The story I've been told is that the winemaker was trying to make a more concentrated zinfandel wine and removed some of the juice so that there was more skin in contact with the juice that remained (giving it more flavor, tannin, etc). He decided to ferment the juice he had removed and see how it turned out. During fermentation, the wine stopped converting sugar to alcohol early (winemakers say this got "stuck" in fermentation). The result was a lower alcohol sweet wine that consumers loved. White Zinfandel continues to maintain popularity, but it is not considered the sophisticated beverage that most wines are today. However, it should be highly regarded by wine snobs and wine slobs alike, as it most likely saved the zinfandel plants from being torn up back in the 80s, when Cabernet began to reign supreme, as white zinfandel was still a big seller.
Happy Holidays!
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1 comment:
I'm actually really glad you posted this. #1 because I really respect your opinion for wine. But mostly because we recently went wine tasting in the Temecula valley wine country and came across a really great "pink" wine that I thought was great.
I wasn't sure if I should really think it was great because I thought pink wines weren't good no matter what. But now that I have your expertise on the situation I can be more confident.
The pink I talk about by the way is by the Cougar Winery in the Temecula valley.
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