I love summer, and not just because I hate winter. I love summer in good part because right around now (and yes, I realize the calendar says summer starts next month, but I don't care) dry rosés are arriving on store shelves, and I love dry rosé. There are good ones made almost everywhere, in a wide variety of styles, and under a bunch of different names: rosato, rosado, vin gris, blush, and white zinfandel/merlot/carmenère, among others. Almost all rosé is made in one of three ways: mix some red wine and white wine together, take some red wine grapes and treat them like white wine grapes (crush them and ferment the juice with no contact with the skins, which is where the red comes from), or bleed off some fermenting red wine before the skins have had a chance to color the wine too much. Rosés are almost always best fresh. In preparation for the coming days manning the grill, I opened a small mountain of recent releases—all but the Bonny Doon, whose current release is the 2005, were from 2006—but if for some reason you can't find any of these delicious wines, at least try to avoid older bottlings (although last night I was very tempted by a 1995 Viña Tondonia rosé on the wonderfully wacky wine list at Broadway Diner). These were my favorites:
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