Wine of the Day: Les Rocailles Rosé Gamay Vin de Savoie

I’ve got a crush on a girl.

Well, at least if we put rosé wines into the more feminine category, I guess that’s true. She’s pretty in pink too. Actually, she’s my favorite rosé-ified hue of pale salmon.

New fave rosé?

I’m talking about the Les Rocailles Rosé Gamay Vin de Savoie. It’s a beautiful little French number (in case you couldn’t tell) and it’s won a place in my heart. The nose opens with white peach, green apple, lime and tangerine on a chalky backbone that reminds me a little of the white dipping stick in a Fun Dip. That’s not a bad thing in my book. There’s also a pink lemonade note that makes me think this is a perfect summer wine, but here we are in fall and I’m loving it still.

Here’s a little help, too, if the label is posing a bit of a challenge for you:

Les Rocailles is the producer

Rosé is the type of wine, and it’s made of the grape Gamay in this case

Vin de Savoie is the region. It’s tucked into the French Alps, east of Burgundy and not so far from both the Swiss and Italian borders.  Here they tend to produce a number of different grapes, and the AOC (or controlled region) is simply called Vin de Savoie (pronounced like van du sav-wa). The grapes and wines in this region tend to be lighter in body, and are usually white or rosé, though some red wine is also produced. I’ve tasted some interesting wines from this region, particularly coming from the white grape Roussanne, which can be really tasty.

I tried the Les Rocailles Rosé with a Southwestern chicken salad, and the spice buried it. It would be much better and express more of its inherent elegance with an arugula salad with goat cheese and slivers of granny smith apple.

Awesome. And under $20.