Despite the change in season, this refreshing and tangy rosé evokes summer
A rare sub-type of rosé, vin gris wines can be an intriguing and refreshing find.
Grapes may come in vibrant shades of green, red, and purple, but the language of wine is typically coded in black and white. Sometimes it even includes a shade of gray, often rendered as “gris” in French or “grigio” in Italian. The term gris on a wine label most often refers to fruit; the most famous example is the paler mutation of pinot noir known as pinot gris or pinot grigio. This grape is dubbed gray because its skin color falls somewhere in between the vine’s standard purple and green, ranging from rusty red to dusty lavender.
However, the word may sometimes refer to the wine, not the grapes, as with this “vin gris” from one of France’s most unusual growing regions.
The Sable de Camargue is a wine appellation that encompasses much of Europe’s largest river delta and its barrier islands, where the Rhône meets the Mediterranean. Its vineyards are planted on sand, many within a few yards of the sea, and specializes in very pale, very delicate rosés like this one.
Vin gris is a rare subtype of rosé. Making pink wine from red grapes usually involves a hybrid process where you start off with skin-to-juice contact as if for red winemaking to extract color, but change gears after a day or two to finish the wine as if it were white to preserve freshness. Vin gris wines are paler, milder, and even more refreshing because they are made from red grapes using only the white wine process, where the juice and skins are separated immediately. You can taste the difference clearly in wines like this one, named for the estate’s gorgeous flocks of wild flamingos. The wine’s scent is as clean and subtle as that of linen dried in a sea breeze. On the palate the wine is quite dry and mouth-wateringly tangy, with flavors of yellow pears and the crunchy white rind of chilled watermelon.
Domaine Royal de Jarras “Pink Flamingo Rosé” Sable de Camargue, France
$10.99, 12.5% alcohol
PLCB Item #2502
Sale price through Oct. 31 — regularly $12.99
No alternate retail sources within 50 miles of Philadelphia according to Wine-Searcher.com