Instead of roses, consider floral gewurztraminer for Valentine’s Day

If there’s a wine lover in your life, they may appreciate a metaphoric “bouquet of roses” for Valentine’s Day even more than a dozen of the flowers. In the wine trade, a wine’s bouquet is another term for its scent when poured and swirled in the glass, and the wines that smell most vividly of roses are those made with one specific grape: gewurztraminer.

Gewurztraminer is known for making white wines that have an intense floral fragrance and flavor in German-speaking regions of Europe, where gewürz means spice. Its most popular style is that championed in southeastern Germany, where lightweight and lightly-sweet wines like this one are paired with flavorful sausage dishes and spicy foods. French examples from Alsace are often richer and drier.

Fans of the even more dramatically floral moscato will find gewurztraminers to be both less intense and less sugary, with more citrus and less peach in the flavor profile. The delicate sweetness and flavor intensity of the lighter German styles can taste more like a fancy cocktail or flavored vodka than white wine, making them an ideal starting point for newcomers to wine.

This succulent German gewürztraminer tastes delicious alone — laden with flavors of rosewater and mandarin oranges — but is a remarkable food partner with many comfort foods as well as spice-driven Middle Eastern and Asian cuisines. This wine’s vivid scent of roses, lychee fruit, and cinnamon may simply derive from an abundance of terpenes, a class of organic compounds found in many essential oils used in aromatherapy. However, the romantic resonance with Valentine’s Day is so unmistakable, your wine lover may wish you’d brought them a dozen.

$11.99, 12.5% alcohol

PLCB Item #8393

Sale price through 2/27 — regularly $13.99

Also available at:

Joe Canal’s Discount Liquor Outlet in Hammonton, N.J.; $13.99, joecanalshammonton.com/