Buyer’s Guide to Vintages June 8th Release

John Szabo’s Vintage’s Preview June 8: Rosés for the Cellar, and Top Red, White, and, err, Blue Wines?

By John Szabo MS, with notes from David Lawrason, Megha Jandhyala and Michael Godel

Rosé for the Cellar

In the May 11 report, just in time for Mother’s Day, Sara D’Amato penned a heartfelt exhortation that rosé is not just for women: “There is absolutely no way to typecast women into rosé drinkers by colour alone. Women don’t all like sweet wines, nor do they prefer low alcohol because of tolerance or guidelines,” she writes, citing the “Brosé” movement — a reference to fashionable European men who drinking rosé — as proof that rosé is inclusive and diverse. I won’t add any more to that, nor to the reality that rosé comes in many shades and styles. The one aspect of rosé that I will add is that many are not one-year wonders, that is, to be consumed as young as possible, within a year of harvest. A surprising number of them would be best served after some time in the cellar.

Henry Of Pelham Speck Family Reserve Pinot Noir 2020, VQA Short Hills Bench, Niagara Escarpment

I was struck again recently by this thought while tasting Malivoire’s Ladybug Rosé, a Vintages essential at the attractive price of $15.95. I assumed it was the 2023 vintage as it had been sent along with the upper tier Vivant and Moira rosé bottlings, which were both 2023. It was probably an error, someone at Malivoire grabbing out of the wrong bin to assemble the samples. I tasted and remarked on the impressive flavour development, in my mind one of the best vintages yet for this rosé which has been made since the late 1990s, and one of the first serious rosés from Ontario. It has evolved from earlier sweeter iterations into a fully respectable, grown-up sort of rosé.

I was shocked to see 2022 on the label. Surely this inexpensive, regular LCBO listing was made for, and expected to be consumed over, the summer of 2023. But here it was, a year past its due date, and drinking perfectly, in fact probably more enjoyable than it would have been last year, and this from a drinker who often prefers to catch wines on the younger side while there’s still fruit around. Now imagine if it had been designed to age.

These thoughts were still swirling in my head while I tasted through the rosés in the June 8 Vintages release, when I came across another local rosé, the Hidden Bench Locust Lane Rosé 2023 from the Beamsville Bench ($24.95), that is clearly age-worthy and designed as such. It’s an impressive wine, pure pinot noir from estate fruit with genuine depth and concentration, but surely not at its best at the moment. I found it to have a little of what’s technically called “reduction,” kind of the opposite of oxidation. You can read Jamie Goode’s excellent description of oxidation and reduction here, so I’ll skip the chemistry details.

What this means is that the wine displays some volatile sulfur compounds which can smell a bit like onion skin or grapefruit zest or flinty struck match, perfectly normal in young wines from reduction-prone varieties like pinot noir, or gamay, or syrah, for example, especially when fermented with limited exposure to oxygen and aged on oxygen-scavenging lees. (Hidden Bench does this in neutral French oak).

Often (but not always), this character works its way out of a wine over time, through carafing (exposure to oxygen) or just more time in bottle (slower exposure to oxygen). It’s a good sign, actually, one that indicates that the wine has life ahead of it. Just go to Burgundy in the spring after harvest and taste out of barrel. The pinots are almost always in a “reductive state,” smelling a bit swampy. But if they weren’t like that, the winemaker would fear that they’ll oxidize prematurely, before even getting into bottle. They make them reductive on purpose.

Hidden Bench takes its rosés seriously: “We believe that Rosé is a serious wine that should not be an afterthought! As such we select some of our best vineyard blocks to produce our Pinot Noir based Locust Lane Rosé and Nocturn Rosé (Bordeaux Varietals) in a dry, food-friendly style with the same attention to detail from vineyard to bottle as our other premium wines,” reads the website. So, for me, it would be a shame to drink the 2023 Locust Lane this summer. Maybe next year, or even the year after, when you can fully enjoy all of the effort that goes into making serious rosé.

I’d put a couple of other rosés in this release into the same category. Jean-Max Roger’s excellent Sancerre La Grange Dimière, for example ($29.95), which earned triple alignment from the WineAlign Crü. It’s also a pure pinot noir, from up to 45-year-old vines, given a long, cool fermentation followed by ageing “on heavy lees of fermentation until the first racking in February.” David described it as “a very classy, subtle but not weak pinot noir rosé. Lifted aromas of redcurrant, strawberry and grapefruit are joined by some flinty notes.” There’s that flint and grapefruit! Megha rejoins with: “I especially like the flavours of firm red berries and pink grapefruit,” adding that it can be enjoyed in any season.

And not reductive but age-worthy nonetheless, thanks to serious stuffing and very ripe grapes (and high alcohol), is the classic Perrin Tavel from the southern Rhône ($23.95), an appellation known for its powerful rosés, not for summer sipping al fresco at 14% alcohol and sometimes more. I found this 2023 to be a particularly rich, ripe, and powerful with plenty of staying power on the palate, and comfortable another 2–3 years or even longer in the cellar.

So now that we’ve settled that rosé isn’t just for women, and that it comes in a wide range of colours and styles, we can also now add ageability to the list of attributes. It’s not all frivolous pink.

Vin, ahh, Bleu?

As mentioned in the introduction, at WineAlign we rarely waste words on what not to drink. And as you know, wines scored under 85 points do not appear on the public-facing side of the website (but the reviews are all there on the back end for internal amusement). But there’s one wine in the release that merits exposing, even at the risk that you’ll run out to buy it out of sheer curiosity.

The wine in question is the Luc Belaire Limited Edition Bleu Sparkling from France ($42.95). There was much speculation in the office as the bottle was being opened whether it was actually blue, or just in a blue-tinted bottle to appear so. But yes, the wine is actually blue. I happened to capture the moment in a photo when Michael first poured the wine into his glass, much to his dismay.

It’s not the world’s first blue-coloured wine. That honour goes to a Spain-based company that produced Gïk blue back in 2016. The wine was produced from red and white Spanish grapes in Rioja and La Mancha, and coloured blue using anthocyanins, a pigment from the skin of red grapes, and indigotine, a plant-based food dye. “There’s no revolution without a counter-revolution,” the company’s five young Spanish founders said in a statement. Co-creator Aritz López was quote in a BBC article as saying: “Gïk was born for fun, to shake things up and see what happens. We wanted to innovate and start a little revolution… and the wine industry looked like the perfect place to start.

However, EU regulations led to the firm being banned from labelling its product as wine, and Gïk had to revert to “other alcoholic drink,” as, surprisingly enough, there is no official EU category for blue wines. And for the record, the company seems to have disappeared as the website now redirects you to an online gambling website.

Blú (formerly Vindigo), is another blue coloured wine, made at Bodegas Perfer in Spain’s Almeria region. It’s made from Chardonnay that has been macerated with the skins of red grapes, according to press reports, citing the creator as French entrepreneur René Le Bail. Le Bail, apparently, was run out of France with his heretical idea, which is why he ended up in Spain. Still and sparkling versions of Blú are still available on the bodegas’ website.

I have tasted neither of these wines.

And now the indefatigable marketing machine behind the Luc Belaire brand has introduced the world to the latest vinous rhapsody in bleu, the Limited Edition Bleu Sparkling. “Its spectacular sapphire color, inspired by the beautiful blue waters of the Côte d’Azur, is ideal for dramatic cocktails as well!”, reads the website. It’s “The New Tradition.”

At the risk of sounding old fashioned and full of sour grapes, this wine is awful. But it’s not the colour that’s off putting, though it’s certainly not comforting, either. Brilliant FCF blue (commercial food dye, is the source of the blue colour, listed as an ingredient on the back label, “as in Curaçao liqueur, Tylenol (Nighttime) Cold, Gatorade and Popsicles,” writes Michael. “It’s generally considered safe for human consumption though it is currently banned in Austria, Belgium, France, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Germany,” he reports further. A little alarming.

I have no objection to a marketing shakeup of the often backwards-looking wine industry. And why not a blue-tinted wine. But the liquid itself is objectionable, and the price is laughable. The entire range of Luc Belaire sparkling wines have always been wildly overpriced in my view, but Bleu reaches new heights of absurdity.

David wasted no time in trying to understand the beverage: “Not wine! Don’t care about or review artificially coloured and flavoured beverages,” he writes. The ingredients listed include natural flavours, citric acid, sugar, and sparkling wine, along with Brilliant Blue FCF. It contains 10% alcohol.

Megha, however, did attempt to fathom the reasoning behind its manufacturing: “This blue sparkling ‘wine’ tastes confected and unnatural, like cough syrup mixed with Gatorade and inexpensive strawberry-flavoured lip gloss. Moreover, it is sweet to the point of being saccharine. In its entirety, it represents to me a set of inexplicable aesthetic choices, ranging from its price to the decision to add ‘natural flavours.’ Perhaps the most baffling choice of all is the addition of Brilliant FCF (a synthetic organic compound used as food dye) to lend it an unearthly, almost creepy colour that was, per the company website, inspired by the Côte d’Azur.”

Michael, for his part, applies his poetic licence to his description: “The aromas are pure sugar syrup and blue powdered sugar Lik-a-Maid candy. Bleu is a medicinally sweet, frozen swampy water on a stick, will turn your tongue blue and at $40.95, also your mood. Imagine what the contrast dye might do to your insides. Your bank account on the other hand will turn red, as will your anger when you realize that the sparkling wine component is just a conduit for the gimmick and the big short, or lie, as it may be. My goodness, why? What good reason could there be to drink this? Perhaps because it’s too expensive to wash the car windows?”

Luc Belaire is owned by the US-based international wine and spirits company Sovereign Brands. The brand was launched in 2011 by CEO Brett Berish, and is produced at a “French maison that was established in 1898,” according to Vinovest. The company’s sparkling wines have become popular among celebrities.

So, who will have the last laugh? I suspect the fictional Mr. Belaire will. No doubt it will sell briskly based purely on the weird blue colour, and the company will pile up the sucker money. But who knows, maybe it will convince a new generation that wine isn’t just your boring parents’ beverage of choice and can be cool blue. I just wish it were drinkable.

Note: The opinions outlined in this piece are just opinions and not facts. Now on to the wine recommendations.

Buyer’s Guide June 8: Rosé

Born Rambla Rosé 2023, Penedès, Spain
$15.95, Kolonaki Group Inc
John Szabo – I have to say, Born Brands has terrific marketing – you have to check out their website, where a “group of women from Barcelona passionate about rosé” smash glasses and bottles of red wine on a white backdrop using golf clubs, sledgehammers and more in a defiant show of support for pink wine. “We don’t make wine. We make rosé”. And it’s made with organically-grown pinot noir with plenty of fresh red cherry and red currant, pomegranate fruit, zesty and vibrant and bone dry. it’s as good as any in the price category, indeed better than many, a triumph of bling and substance. And not just for women.
Michael Godel – From a group of Barcelonan woman passionate about rosé. Fresh, vibrant, salty and bloody delicious.

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That’s all for this report, see round the next bottle.

John Szabo, MS

Editors Note: We will not be publishing a newsletter reviewing Vintages June 22 OnLine and Flagship Release as the entire WineAlign cru will be in Niagara judging the 23rd annual National Wine Awards of Canada. Notes on several June 22 wines are being posted this week, and we will continue to taste any other samples that come our way in the days ahead. We will return in July with a review of the July 6 release.

Use these quick links for access to all of our Top Picks in the New Release. Non-Premium members can select from all release dates 30 days prior.
Lawrason’s Take
Michael’s Mix
Megha’s Picks
Szabo’s Smart Buys

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