Author: amarose

Wine comes in all sorts of colors. Red wine can be bright red, but it can also be so dark as to be purple or almost black. White wine can be perfectly clear or it can be tinged with yellow, gold, or even green. Rosé is traditionally pink but can seem orange or gold as well depending on the blend. But, thankfully, common knowledge dictates that those are the three broad types of grape based wine, and so it’s not too hard to identify what type of wine you’re drinking by color. But what if there was a fourth type of wine? A whole world of different colors and flavors, living in relative obscurity. What if there was such thing as… Orange Wine?

What is Orange Wine?

This special wine is made when you use the grapes that are generally used for white wine, but allow the skins to remain in the fermenting mixture. For reference,white wine is made without skins, but red wine leaves the skins in to imbue color, flavor and depth.  If rosé is red wine made in the fashion of a white wine, then orange wine is white wine made in the fashion of a red.

What Does It Taste Like?

Orange wine is a bold, flavorful beverage that can have tasting notes like hazelnut, apple, and sourdough. Its intense tannin content can also lead to an intense sourness, like that of a sour-style beer. Due to its intense flavor orange wine has never achieved the notoriety of its more famous siblings, but that doesn’t mean that its acquired taste isn’t worth acquiring.

What Should I Drink It With?

If you’re looking to pair food with orange wine, try something complex and flavorful. Dishes from Asia and Africa often use complex combinations of spices that combine nicely with the equally bold complexity of orange wine. Next time you’re making Indian food, pick up a bottle from your nearest supplier and see how you like it!

We all know that wine needs to sit for a few months before it’s ready to drink. Flavor (and alcohol percentage!) can’t be created in a day. But what is wine aging? How long do wines take to age? And why do some wines get better year after year while others turn into vinegar? There’s a few ways you can find out: You could engage in a lengthy and intensive scientific study, aging different wines in different conditions for different lengths of time in order to determine what can be aged and how to age it, or you could save years of your life and read the information compiled in this blog post!

What Does Wine Aging Do?

Wine, like any perishable food, changes with age. For all wines, this change happens first when a concoction of grape juice and yeast is set to resting until it develops an alcohol content and becomes delicious, complex wine. At this point, usually a matter of months after the initial creation of the wine, the winemaker moves the wine from their ‘age’ category into their ‘drink’ category, and you can enjoy it without guilt that you’re not enjoying the wine at its full potential

What Happens to Wine if You Age It More?

With a lot of wine, aging it past its prime drinkability will negate its alcohol content and turn it into vinegary swill. But with certain wines, primarily fortified wines and high acidity reds, aging can produce complex flavors and introduce an extra dimension of depth. A general rule of thumb is that the higher the tannin content of the wine, the better it will age- but there are other factors, such as sugar content and alcohol content, that can effect the aging process. While aging is usually the purview of red wines, other wines can be aged as well. High acidity whites, rosés, and champagnes can also develop complex flavor as they age, though it’s less common. If you’re looking to experiment with wine aging, try with a Syrah!

It’s the Fourth of July, which means, barbeque, fireworks, and displays of patriotic fervor! While beer is generally considered to be the drink of the holiday, America is a melting pot, and that means that wine drinkers have a place too. However, since the founding of this great nation, there have been a few rules put in place to make sure that wine drinking americans have their loyalties in the right place. Wine is, after all, a very european beverage and thus can often denote its enjoyers as cowardly, or evil, or just plain unamerican. Don’t worry, though! We’ve compiled a special guide to teach you how to employ patriotic wine practices during this Independence day.

Open your bottle with a gun

On any other day its best to simply uncork your wine, or if your feeling fancy knock the top off with a saber, but on the fourth of July the only way to open a bottle is by blasting its top off with the highest caliber firearm you can find. This rule of thumb originated during the signing of the declaration of independence, when Thomas Jefferson held up a bottle of Ye Olde Pinot Grigio for Ben Franklin to shoot open with a musket. Be sure to practice gun safety when doing this, and be prepared for your wine to taste strongly of lead, gunpowder, and glass shards.

Before taking a sip, announce your capitalist convictions aloud.

In the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy passed Jefferson and Franklin’s Independence Day Wine Rule from tradition into law, and added an addendum of his own: If you are a truly patriotic wine drinker, after you shoot the bottle open but before you take a sip you will yell at the top of your lungs, “I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party!” While this is no longer a legal requirement thanks to revisions made by the Clinton Administration, people will still give you weird looks on the Fourth of July if you don’t do it.

When you have finished your wine, thank the presidents in order.

Finally, once you have successfully finished your patriotic wine experience, you should thank each individual President, from Washington to Biden, for allowing you to enjoy such delicious nectar. It is expected, though not required, that each president’s thanks is personalized with a short dedication. Once you’ve finished, you’ve successfully drank your wine like an American.

Between astrological signs, Myers-Briggs Personality types, and ‘What Hogwarts House Are You’ quizzes, theres more options than ever to sort yourself into identifiable categories. This can be useful! Sometimes it’s comforting to be able to enter elements of yourself into an equation that will then tell you what type of person you are. But what can your favorite wine varietal teach you about yourself? As it turns out, a lot! After many hours of dedicated ‘personality science,’ I have mathematically figured out what your favorite varietal says about your personality, as well as what crime you will eventually go down for.

Pinot Noir

If your favorite wine varietal is pinot noir, you’re independently minded with a sense of refinement and class. You love order, hate a mess, and would excel as an interior designer or a small business owner. You will be sent to prison for the rest of your life for accidentally murdering your long-lost twin, believing them to be some phantom or demon sent from hell to steal your face and replace you.

Chardonnay

If you like chardonnay, you’re a free spirited iconoclast with a love of nature and a happy-go-lucky attitude. You will eventually be caught after a string of successful bank robberies, and while you will spend the rest of your days behind bars, the authorities will never find the money and your terminally ill niece will be able to pay for her recovery.

Syrah

If syrah is your wine varietal of choice, you love stirring up trouble and talking behind other peoples backs. Gossip is your middle name, and if there isn’t someone mad at you for revealing their secrets, than you’ve been having a bad week. When you get your life sentence, it will be because your enemies framed you for a triple-homicide that you didn’t commit, and you will be left with a choice to either prove your innocence through the law or break out of jail and take extrajudicial revenge.

Sauvignon Blanc

Sauvignon blanc aficionados are known love deeply and fall hard. You wear your heart on your sleeve, and while some view your thin skin as a weakness, it’s actually a sign of a deep, complex soul. You will be sent to prison for the rest of your life after it is revealed that your once-trendy tech startup has been defrauding its investors for billions of dollars.

As we have previously established, the phrase ‘Rosé All Day’ does not actually mean that you should spend all day drinking rosé. All things are best in moderation, and rosé is no exception. But when is it appropriate to drink rosé? When is it inappropriate? These social puzzles can be hard to solve, especially when your ability to reason has been hopelessly compromised by the delicious flavor of rosé. Don’t worry– We’ll make sure you always know when to drink rosé and when to abstain with this handy guide.

Are you operating heavy machinery?

Lets start with the most obvious ones: If you are currently in control of a car or other heavy machinery, and you are wondering if it is rosé time, it is NOT! Rosé, like any alcohol, will make you drunk when you drink it and your ability to operate your machinery safely will be compromised! 

Are you with friends?

While it’s not as big a transgression as point number 1, if you’re alone it might also not be the best idea to drink rosé. Rosé should be enjoyed with friends, so if you’re out with a group of people you like, it just might be rosé time.

What time is it?

Rosé time? You ask hopefully. Maybe! If its first thing in the morning you should refrain from drinking rosé, though a glass at sunday brunch is both yummy and socially acceptable. The optimal time for Rosé is probably late afternoon, when the sun is still hot but the day is winding down.

What are the vibes like?

This one you’re going to have to do a little bit of intuiting for. Rosé is a light, fun drink, and so if even if its late afternoon and you’re with friends and you are not driving a car, it might not be rosé time if, say, your best friend has just lost a family member or if they got fired or something similarly bad. Save the rosé for happier times, so your memories of it stay cheerful! For the bad times, maybe a dark red or some liquor.

Amarose rosé, as you may know, is a Provence style rosé. That means that Amarose is relatively dry and crisp compared to some other rosés, and, crucially, that its style originated in France. We’ve talked a lot about the history of rosé on this blog, but what about the history of French wine as a whole? France boasts one of the oldest winemaking traditions in the world, and the development of its industry from ancient times to the present offers a fascinating window into why the wines we drink today taste so good. It’s French wine history time!

Ancient Times

Though there is evidence of ancient Gauls cultivating wine grapes, French wine as we know it began in the 6th century BCE when Greek settlers imported the plant to France’s southern coast. There the plant flourished and wine was produced in the Ancient Greek style- with little regard for keeping white and red grapes separate, and often mixed with water to reduce its potency. When the Roman Empire came to prominence, French wine suffered from prohibitions on non-italian wines, but once Rome fell there was plenty of space for France to once again thrive. It is during this Roman period that Provence, the area where Amarose gets its style, gained its name

The Middle Ages

After a new economic paradigm was formed by the founding of Charlemagne’s Carolingian Empire, wine production in France boomed. Due to the importance of waterways in trade at the time, wine regions on the coasts and near rivers became vital to emerging French culture, and as alliances between medieval courts were formed and broken, French wine made its way to Scotland, England, and the Netherlands. As the Dutch built their trade networks into a primitive form of capitalism, the quality of french wine led to increased Dutch investment and became even more renowned and widespread.

The Modern Age

Following the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, French vintners led the world in refining and perfecting wine-making techniques. Production continued to boom and French wine enjoyed worldwide prominence until the mid 19th century, when a host of maladies brought over from the burgeoning American wine industry caused French vines to die in swaths. Thankfully, French vintners saved their livelihoods by planting hybrid vines- original french grapes bolstered by the genes of more resistant American stock. French wine history from then on is more or less a straight line of development, the vinters becoming more exact in their art and the production capacity steadily increasing. Whatever problems French wine might face in the future, they have proved themselves more than a match!

The first step to happiness, as we all know, is accruing a wide and varied collection of wine. But once you have all that wine? How are you going to protect it? What the lying news media won’t tell you is that there are anywhere between 10 and 1,000 bandits, ruffians, and ne’er do wells on your street every night looking for delicious vintages to steal. If you’re not willing to guard your wine with your life, you might as well put it out on the curb and relinquish all claim to it. But how are you going to go about securing your stash? Wine security is no joke, but we’re here to help.

Wine Security Essentials: Hire 20 Armed Guards

MINIMUM. The more guys you have watching your delicious whites, decadent reds, and playful rosés, the less likely it is that a prowler thirsty for vino will be able to access your stash. Cameras can be avoided, security systems can be hacked, but 20 loyal guys with lethal weaponry will never let you down. Be sure to keep them from flipping on you by sharing your wine with them. Invite them to your picnics and barbeques. Let them know that they are part of the family.

Poison Your Wine.

Starting now, inoculate yourself to an odorless, flavorless poison of your choice by adding a low dose to every meal you eat. Once you accrue a tolerance, spike your wines so that any wannabe thief will be killed the instant they take a sip. Be sure to inoculate your friends, family, armed guards, and whoever else you might want to share wine with or your life could suddenly become incredibly tragic.

The Latest in Wine Security: Mouse Trap

If somehow the wine crazed burglar gets past your 20 loyal protectors and your poisoned goods, then treat them to the final boss of wine security: A human sized mouse trap. While the snap of the trap will likely destroy the bottle of wine that you leave as bait, one lost bottle is better than 10 stolen ones. Mesmerized by the idea that their criminal enterprise is about to pay off, your would be wine thief will jump at the bait  bottle- And then be trapped between a plywood base and a steel wire. Works every time!

Back in the 1980s, Dungeons and Dragons was a niche activity played by nerds and losers. But times change, and in the modern age the tabletop role playing game is not only popular, it’s cool. People listen to podcasts about DnD, play it at bars, and now there’s even a high budget film franchise based on it. If you’re one of the many people in their twenties who like to get a group of friends together and play DnD, you might be in search of the perfect Dungeons and Dragons wine, one that you can bring to a session and enjoy as you complete quests, kill monsters, and cause chaos in quaint medieval taverns. Search no more: Here is Amarose’s guide to the perfect DnD wine!

Lore Accurate

Something to be mindful of when selecting your Dungeons and Dragons wine is how well it fits into the world that you’re playing in. If the setting for your campaign is based on medieval europe, it might not make sense to drink sake. Maybe if the setting is gothic horror it might make sense to drink a dark, aromatic red, or if you’re adventuring in a summery setting you might want a cool, refreshing white.

Cost Efficient

DnD is a casual activity, and you probably don’t want to break the bank over it. So, if you’ve found the perfect wine, maybe a red blend based on an ancient recipe or a mead with a name like ‘viking blood,’ you might want to check the price tag first. Immersion is not worth spending 30 dollars or more for a wine that you’re going to drink casually as you play a tabletop game. Go for something a little cheaper, even if it compromises your vision a little.

Drinkable

So you’ve filtered wines by lore accuracy and cost efficiency, and what you’re left with might taste pretty bad! The worst case scenario for your Dungeons and Dragons wine is that it is disgusting, but thankfully, we have a solution: Rosé! It fits in many medieval and ancient settings (ancient winemakers could not get all the tannins out of red grapes, so their red wines were really rosés), it’s affordable, and it tastes delicious! Bring a bottle to your next Dungeons and Dragons session and your friends and co-adventurers will thank you.

‘Rosé All Day’ is the catchphrase of a lifestyle, a fun rhyme that rosé lovers use to express their love for the delicious pink wine. But how did the phrase come to be? What is the history of the movement, what are the underlying social and economic conditions that led to its birth, and most importantly, do you really have to be drinking rosé all day?

How Much Rosé Should You Really Be Drinking?

Lets address the last question first. The answer is no, you should not actually be drinking any alcohol all day. Have a glass with dinner or share a bottle on a weekend picnic. If you truly spend all day drinking rosé, the chances of your physical, mental, and social health sharply deteriorating rises exponentially. Rosé All Day is more about keeping the spirit of rosé alive even when you’re not drinking it. That means keeping it light, fun, and approachable 24/7.

How Did Rosé All Day Start?

It started with a tweet, posted in 2010 by the now deleted account @DIORSWORLD305, saying ‘ok we poppin bottles #BOSS CHICK #RoséAllDay.’ One can only guess at DIORSWORLD305’s state of mind at that moment when they made history. Perhaps they had just received a promotion at work, becoming in truth the ‘Boss Chick’ that they reference, and felt compelled to open a bottle of rosé in celebration. Perhaps it was an expression of exuberant defiance in the face of the slow recovery of the economy after the 2008 recession, that though the world was uncertain they remained the Boss Chick with the popped bottle of rosé. Whatever their motives, that tweet changed the world forever.

When Did The Phrase Spread?

Once cast into the world by DIORSWORLD305, our favorite catchphrase stewed in hibernation for 6 years before exploding into the popular consciousness in summer of 2016. The relative inexpensiveness of rosé combined with its eminent drinkability to create a drink perfect for a new generation of younger millennials entering the legal age of drinking. In those months from June to September, the hashtag #roséallday swept the internet and the real world, cementing rosé as more than just a niche wine style. By the end of that historic summer, Rosé All Day had been canonized by the greatest honor an internet-age cultural movement can receive: A scolding article from Vice accusing the hashtag of fomenting social rot.

Wine walks. We’ve all done them. It’s the post-pandemic era and there’s no shame in it: Get a little bit of wine, take a nice walk outside, and sip as you enjoy the fresh air and sunshine. Maybe you like to drink a little chardonnay as you walk around a local body of water, or some pinot noir as you traipse through a rose garden. Maybe you take a trek through the woods with a splash of rosé! Whatever your preference, there’s usually only one thing standing in the way of a good time: Open container laws. Thankfully, we’ve got your back with some acceptable to-go cups that can keep your wine walks on the right side of the law.

WATER BOTTLE: The Boring Option

It’s simple, it’s easy, it’s washable: Just wash out your trusty water bottle and put some wine in it. This option is the easiest and requires the least preparation, but it does come with its drawbacks. For one, a water bottle will hold way more wine than you want to drink, and you’ll have to regulate yourself either by not filling it up all the way or by keeping track of how much you have drank (which can be hard to do with an opaque water bottle!) Also, some of the romanticism of wine walks will inevitably be lost with such a boring, regular container.

REPURPOSED JUICE BOX: For Wine Walks Down Memory Lane

This method is a lot more intensive than the first, but it’s got a lot of style. Drink a juice box like a Capri Sun, cut open the top, fill it with wine, and reseal with a curling iron or some similar heat source. An instantly grown up Juice box! For this one you’ll definitely need to plan ahead, but it’s worth it to combine the thrill of a wine walk with the nostalgic packaging of a Capri Sun.

SIPPY CUP: The Platonic Ideal

This is the best of both worlds. Both reusable and low-maintenance and reminiscent of childhood spring days, a sippy cup will hold the right amount of wine and add a splash of whimsy to your wine walk. Be sure, however, to buy a fresh one from the store rather than stealing one from a young relative or neighbor. If there’s one thing more illegal than an open container, it’s stealing from children.